Civil War News October 2020

A Question of Treason?

by Joan Wenner, J.D.

It has been quoted that treason; the only offense defined by the Constitution, can be difficult to prove and is rarely prosecuted against U.S. citizens, although Confederate President Jefferson Davis is often cited as an example. Though imprisoned at Fortress Monroe, Davis was never tried. His Vice President, Alexander H. Stephens, was arrested and imprisoned after the war but soon released and later served Georgia as a U.S. senator and as governor. Historians say the government essentially decided trying the Confederates would not help the country.

In actuality, the Constitution does not directly mention ‘secession;’ the Supreme Court labels the government as “indestructible.”

Treason – 1860

Briefly, the “President and Congress have the whole of the political, national and inter-state power of the Union...;” “the states have no power to form a Confederacy within the Union composed of any of its States.” Additionally, the states have no

right to organize an army or navy or make war or invade “any other states by military power, or to seek to divide or disrupt the Union, or defeat by force or menace the execution of Congressional acts for the use of any State, or the Southern Confederacy, any fort, Custom house, mint, or vessel of the Union...those acts are treason, whether done by private persons, or armed men, or officers of a Southern Confederacy, State Legislatures or State Conventions.” Note: This was a scholarly Constitutional law work on the Law of Treason by Gardner’s Institutes (a publisher of U.S. law books) prepared in 1860, and subsequently printed by the New York Times newspaper on April 21, 1861.

To extend the interpretation, those who would aid, if done with knowledge, the existing Southern conspiracy by loaning money to, or in making, selling, transporting arms, munitions, clothing, supplies, or anything for the rebel armies, “are traitors.” News articles, state proclamations, or any act levying war, armed meetings are treasonable, “if in the smallest degree aids and encourages the treason by levying war at a remote point.” “That secession is treason and subject to capital punishment.”

Treason today – United States Code, Title 18

Sections 2381-2385

U.S. STATUTES, Title 18 United States Code, Sections 2381, 2382, 2383, 2384, and 2385 based on Public Laws, 1909, and as amended in 1948, and subsequently increasing penalties for violation.

Most basically for our purposes here:

Section 2382, Treason –Whoever owing allegiance to the United States, and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against then, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some

judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both.

18 U.S.C. Section 2383, Rebellion or InsurrectionWhoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

18 U.S.C. Section 2384, Seditious conspiracy – Relates to conspiring with others “to

overthrow, put down or to destroy by force” or “prevent, hinder, or delay of any law of the United States” – or take or possess any property of the United States – can get you twenty years. Section 2385 covers Advocating Overthrow of Government. Civilian military activity and organizations “subject to foreign control” are covered in subsequent sections.

Were Confederates tried for Treason?

It has been noted that, due to the massive newspaper coverage of the Wirz Tribunal and the lack of trials against major Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, it appeared to average Americans,

both North and South, that Wirz was the only person tried, convicted, or executed after the war.

President Andrew Johnson on May 29, 1865, issued a proclamation granting amnesty to most Confederates, except for Robert E. Lee, who did sign his Amnesty Oath on October 2, 1865, but was not formally pardoned.

According to a 2018 report by Politico, “Lincoln had issued 64 pardons for war-related offenses; 22 for conspiracy; 17 for treason; 12 for rebellion; 9 for holding an office under the Confederacy; and 4 for serving with the rebels.” One of those convicted during the war of treason was a

Print showing Robert E. Lee and 21 Confederate generals. A. (Augustus) Tholey, artist. Library of Congress.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

We wish to thank Publisher Jack Melton for permitting us to share the Civil War News column by Editor Lawrence E. Babits, which offers a sober caution about the grave consequences to the study of our nation’s history that the current monuments controversy might engender. This legitimate concern is well worth reading and practicing.

Lee & Michele Noyes, Past Editors

CBHMA Battlefield Dispatch

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

It was with great wonderment that I read M.G. Subhas’ article “Ulysses S. Grant: Migraine and Drunkenness – A Reconciliation” in your September issue of Civil War News. I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s clear and well-articulated presentation of facts. I wish to point to one additional reference that goes to the heart of the matter. In chapter 4 of John Eaton’s book Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen, Eaton recalled being present in Grant’s residence while Julia applied poultices to Ulysses’ head and neck “to relieve the violent sick headache from which he was suffering and to which he was subject.” The event took place at the Gayoso House in Memphis during the early months of 1863. Eaton is a highly credible witness who had uncommon access to General Grant during that period. He follows up this account by flatly dismissing stories of Grant’s intemperance.

Joe Krom Argos, Ind.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Re: “The Unfinished Fight: War Horses,” by Craig Barry (CWN Sept. 2020, pp. 18-19):

May I call your attention to The Photographic History of the Civil War, Vol. 4 “The Cavalry,” Chapter 11, “Famous Chargers” by Theo. F Rodenbough (p. 289 ff). This also has pictures and accounts of named horses. Other scattered references to horses and their owners can be found throughout the 10-volume series. The Photographic History (New York: The Review of Reviews Co., 1911) isn’t just a collection of pictures. Published 50 years after the war, it also has text, including accounts of lesser-known actions often overlooked in the larger histories.

Nancy Martsch

Correction – On page 2, August edition of Civil War News, there was an error in the editorial “On monuments and the Silent Majority.”

The last phrase of the fourth paragraph should have read “a past that must not be repeated.”

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Emerging Civil War Honors Jack W. Melton Jr. of Civil War News with Stevenson Award

Emerging Civil War is pleased to honor Jack Melton with its Brig. Gen. Thomas Greely Stevenson Award for 2020. Melton and his wife, Peggy, own and publish Civil War News, the oldest continuing newspaper for Civil War enthusiasts, and The Artilleryman magazine.

its pages. ECW has run content on its blog highlighting the paper’s columnists (you can read that series here: https://emergingcivilwar.com/tag/extra-extra-civil-war-news). ECW writers have also contributed book reviews, feature stories, and other articles to the newspaper.

“The synergy has been great,” Mackowski says. “We are very thankful for the chance to work with Jack, and his wife and partner, Peggy, in making the Civil War as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.”

The Stevenson Award is presented to an individual or organization in recognition of their outstanding service to ECW.

“Civil War News has been a wonderful partner for ECW, a relationship suggested by Jack and grounded in a shared desire to serve the Civil War community,” says ECW Editor-in-Chief Chris Mackowski. “The common vision has given us many opportunities to work together in positive ways that have helped both organizations thrive. Most importantly, Jack is a true southern gentleman, good guy, and strong advocate for Civil War buffs everywhere.”

Melton agrees both organizations complement each other. “It’s a good fit,” he says. “Civil War News and Emerging Civil War are both publications for the serious study of the American Civil War, working with the top contributors in the field. I saw the energy and commitment of ECW’s founders and asked that they partner with us in spreading the word.”

Each month, Civil War News includes ECW’s newsletter in

The Meltons purchased Civil War News in 2016. “We are on Vol. 46, No. 9, and in three issues we will be starting in our 47th year of continuous publication,” Jack Melton says. “We have published almost 1,000 articles, press releases, columns, etc. since we purchased Civil War News, and over 600 book reviews.”

Prior to acquiring the newspaper, the Meltons purchased The Artilleryman magazine in 2015. “We are on Vol. 41, No. 4 and will be in our 42nd year this winter,” Jack adds. “The magazine is my real passion.”

Melton is a life-long resident of Georgia, born in Columbus in 1960. He grew up adjacent to Kennesaw Mountain National Military Park near Kolb Farm. Knowing that several ancestors fought for the South heightened his curiosity about the rich history in his backyard. His great-grandfather, Jefferson Love, was an artillery driver for Milton’s Light Artillery of Florida. His great-great-grandfather, Samuel Troup Carter, was in the 14th Alabama Infantry. “I was destined through geography and heredity to be a student of the Civil War,” he says.

Melton’s interest in the history-rich area surrounding him spurred him to respond to the National Park Service’s need for a historical trail through Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. After constructing the trail for his Eagle Scout project, he was awarded his Eagle Scout Badge on July 4, 1976, making him a Bicentennial Eagle Scout.

Melton began metal detecting at age 14, and found his first Civil War 12-pound solid shot that same year while hunting with his dad. Thus, began his interest in artillery projectiles from the Civil War. Melton became an authority on Civil War artillery, known for his historical accuracy.

With Lawrence Pawl, he co-authored Field Artillery Ordnance 1861–1865 (1994) and Melton & Pawl’s Guide To Civil War Artillery Projectiles (1996). With Steve Mullinax, he co-authored In The Line Of Fire (2006). With Josh Phillips and John Sexton, he co-authored Confederate Bowie Knives (2012). He has also authored the only artillery projectile book in color, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book (2018). Recently, he co-authored with Stephen Davis 100 Significant Civil War Photographs – Charleston in the War (2020).

Melton has also consulted on another 20 military artifact reference books on topics including accoutrements, uniforms and equipment, edged weapons, Bowie knives, belt buckles, firearms, and artillery. He is also a photographer and Civil War artillery consultant to the Atlanta History Center. His photographs have appeared on almost 100 Civil War magazine and book covers.

Aside from his partnership with Emerging Civil War, Melton has worked with publishers including National Geographic, University of Georgia Press, The New York Times, The Civil War Trust, Weider History Group (World History Group: Civil War Times and America’s Civil War), North South Trader’s Civil War, McFarland & Co., O’Donnell Publications, Potomac Publishing Co., and Mowbray Publishing.

Melton is a Life Member of the Company of Military Historians and past president of the Civil War Round Table of Atlanta.

Emerging Civil War’s Thomas Greeley Stevenson Award is named after Brig. Gen. Thomas Greeley Stevenson, a Union IX Corps division commander killed at the battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864.

Emerging Civil War holds its annual Symposium at Stevenson Ridge, on the battlefield in the area where Stevenson was killed.

Previous recipients of the award have included C-SPAN, historian Greg Mertz, Southern

Illinois University Press’s Sylvia Frank Rodrigue, and publisher Ted Savas.

Emerging Civil War is the collaborative effort of more than two-dozen historians committed to sharing the story of the Civil War in an accessible way. Founded in 2011 by Kris White and Chris Mackowski, Emerging Civil War features public and academic historians of diverse backgrounds and interests, while also providing a platform for emerging voices in the field. Initiatives include the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series of books published by Savas Beatie, LLC; the “Engaging the Civil War” Series published by Southern Illinois University Press; an annual symposium; a speaker’s bureau; and a daily blog: www.emergingcivilwar.com.

Emerging Civil War is recognized by the I.R.S. as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation. For more information, contact Chris Mackowski, emergingcivilwar@gmail.com www.emergingcivilwar.com

U.S. Congressman, Clement L. Vallandigham, who was banished to the Confederate States.

Civilians Executed for Treason?

How many, if any, were tried for treason may not be accurately calculated, but we do know one, William Bruce Mumford, a North Carolinian residing in Union occupied New Orleans, was convicted and hanged in June 1862 for tearing down a U.S. flag flying over the U.S. Mint.

‘Treason’ was said to have been devised as a deterrent to criminal disloyalty. It appears that civilians charged with treason, for the most part opted to be tried in a civilian court. The ‘battle’ to prevent military tribunals from claiming jurisdiction over civilians has been fought, it’s said, since the country was founded; due process and right to a trial by jury of one’s peers being compelling arguments. This right includes employees of companies engaging in suspect activities, and presumably for Southern state government employees and officials. Confederate officers, enlisted men, and government agents may have been regarded differently.

Were U.S. military officers guilty of ‘treason’ when they resigned their commissions to serve in their home state military/ militias?

This question, and whether today they should forever be named ‘traitors’, or should have been duly charged as such, will likely always be debated by those in the Civil War history community and others.

The North and the South contained determined men ready to fight wrote the chronicler of the Civil War, the late author and highly recognized expert Bruce Catton in his well-known series of three 1961 volumes. He included a quote from the Charleston Mercury newspaper dated March 6, 1861, “That the United States has become a mobocratic empire and the Union of the States is now dissolved.”

Early in the thirty-seventh Congress, Catton noted “that the word ‘treason’ was used often” in considering eight Southern Senators who were expelled since their seats had already been declared vacant because their states had left the Union.

Catton also quoted a California senator who said, “Treason was always a gentlemanly crime, and in ancient times a man who committed [it] was entitled to the axe instead of the halter.” Catton also reminded readers that there is the age-old rule that one does not trade with the enemy in wartime, but pointed out the two nations fighting the war were not foreign enemies; they were simply estranged halves of an economic whole, and the necessity for an exchange of essential goods between the Northern and Southern states had to go on, and it has. Send comments to: mail@civilwarnews.com.

GETTYSBURG, Pa.—The

Licensed Battlefield Guides at Gettysburg are raising the alarm over a recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to have all Confederate monuments, statues and “commemorative placards” removed from Gettysburg National Military Park as well as all other federal parks nationwide.

“We urge the U.S. Senate to strip out this provision that would destroy the unequaled collection of monuments, Union and Confederate, that set Gettysburg apart as a great battlefield park and a top visitor destination,” said Les Fowler, president of the Association of Licensed Battlefield Guides.

Fowler said the legislation in question – HR-7608 – recently passed the full House. It would direct the National Park Service

to remove all Confederate monuments, memorials, placards and statues at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Antietam, Chickamauga, Manassas, Petersburg, Fredericksburg and 18 other battlefields and historic sites within six months. These Civil War battlefields and their monuments and interpretive plaques have been preserved to help Americans and foreign guests visualize and understand the terrible ordeal that forged this nation. The monuments at Gettysburg from both sides allow us to interpret this national struggle for freedom as it continues today.

Gettysburg is the largest Civil War battlefield commemorating the bloodiest battle ever fought in North America. Licensed Battlefield Guides have provided tours of the battlefield since 1915

and today is the nation’s oldest professional guide service, providing interpretation and context for the battlefield and more than 1,300 monuments and markers.

“The monuments representing all of the soldiers who fought here are a critical component of interpreting these sacred grounds,” Fowler said. Veteran battlefield guide Deb Novotny said, “The monuments serve as tools for us to tell the story not only of this battle but of the struggle of our nation to heal itself after the war.”

Decorated combat veteran Elliott Ackerman, a columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote: “An area of our complex past that should be left untouched are battlefields... Blood consecrates a battlefield, and it is never the blood of only one side.”

The provision to remove Confederate monuments and markers was buried deep within a 727-page bill that also funds the State Department, Agriculture Department and the EPA. Despite the House’s action, there is still an opportunity to save the important story told at these Civil War parks by urging the Senate to remove this provision from the final funding legislation.

“We will do what we can to convince all members of Congress to address and to oppose this removal provision. We encourage all advocates for Gettysburg to join our effort and reach out to their representatives,” Fowler said.

Here is the text and a link to the HR-7608:

Removal of Confederate commemorative works

Sec. 442. Notwithstanding any other provision of law or policy to the contrary, within 180 days of enactment of this Act, the National Park Service shall remove from display all physical Confederate commemorative works, such as statues, monuments, sculptures, memorials, and plaques, as defined by NPS, Management Policies 2006, §9.6.1.

Inventory of assets with Confederate names

Sec. 443. Within 90 days of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall submit to the Committee on Appropriations an inventory of all assets under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior with Confederate names.

Link to the text of the bill: https://www.congress. gov/bill/116th-congress/ house-bill/7608/text

Just hit CTRL+F (Windows) while on that web page and search on “confederate” to find this section of the bill. Also, these provisions do NOT appear in any of the summaries of this bill.

Contact your senators at: https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_ cfm.cfm?Class=1

REFUSE BILL

WASHINGTON, D.C.— August 26, 2020, U.S. Representative Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) announced the introduction of the Rejecting and Eliminating the Foul Use of Symbols Exulting (REFUSE) Confederate Principles Act, which would establish a program through the U.S. National Park Service to expedite the removal of Confederate symbols and to incentivize the formation of alternative structures.

“A little over three years ago, self-identified white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and members of the Klu Klux Klan descended upon Charlottesville, Va., to ‘Unite the Right’ and honor the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee,” said Rep. Rush. “Those racist thugs brandished weapons and carried torches, chanted ‘blood and soil’ and ‘Jews will not replace us.’ The hatred that consumed the streets of Charlottesville eventually led to the death of Heather Heyer when one Confederate sympathizer drove his car into her and a group of peaceful, counter protesters.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are

over 1,700 similar Confederate statues and monuments that remain in public places across the nation. These abhorrent commemorative structures, many of which were created long past the conclusion of the Civil War, are located in areas that far exceed the confines of the eleven Confederate States and are a means to uphold Confederate principles and white supremacy, the same white supremacy that led to the death of Heather Heyer and countless others.

“It is past time that we eradicate these totems of treason and replace them with symbols that represent the true promise of America, such as the emancipation of Black Americans. My bill, the REFUSE Confederate Principles Act would do just that by creating the Emancipation Historic Preservation program, that would provide grants for removing the false idols of the Confederacy and replace them with symbols and structures that we can actually be proud of.”

The REFUSE Confederate Principals Act would expedite the removal of Confederate symbols by:

• Establishing a grant program entitled the Emancipation Historic Preservation Program for the purpose of removing and replacing Confederate symbols;

• Authorizing funding to supplement the formation of alternative structures or symbols, including those structures or symbols that commemorate or depict the freedom of enslaved Black people;

• Authorizing funding for the storage of symbols by a state historic preservation program for educational purposes;

• Prohibiting the use of authorized appropriations under this Act for the preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, or construction of a Confederate symbol; and

• Mandating a reporting structure to ensure accountability in the distribution and use of funds.

Source: https://rush.house. gov/media-center/press-releases/ rush-introduces-legislation-to-remove-over-1700-confederate-monuments.

Licensed Battlefield Guides Raise Alarm of Major Threat to Gettysburg Monuments

EXTREMELY RARE AND IMPORTANT CIVIL WAR BEARDSLEE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH NO. 5 WITH THE MAGNIFICENT, CASED PRESENTATION SWORD OF COLONEL EDWARD SEWALL SANDFORD, MILITARY SUPERVISOR OF TELEGRAPHIC MESSAGES, UNION ARMY, 1862-1865

How Far? A New Perspective on the Battle of Spotsylvania

by Terry Rensel

When I was eighteen and in basic training, we had a road march of 12-15 miles one day. Although I don’t walk those distances these days, I still remember and appreciate just how far that is. Those memories and walking battlefields today really help me gain a better perspective on the experience of Civil War soldiers getting to battle and puts the history on book pages into perspective, especially for the two week conflict around Spotsylvania Court House.

While most Civil War buffs are familiar with the fierce combat at the Muleshoe Salient and the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864, combat raged through that area for two weeks, May 8-21, 1864. The series of fights around the crossroads and courthouse caused the shifting of divisions and corps over significant distances: I’ve spent the last few months digging deeper into the history of maneuvering into battle positions, or rushing into the fight as reinforcements,

and gaining a better appreciation for the distances infantry covered during those two weeks. Civil War soldiers endured plenty of hardships just to get into battle.

The Battle of Spotsylvania started with a race from The Wilderness toward Spotsylvania Court House. Brock Road covered the six miles between Todd’s Tavern and Spotsylvania Court House and the narrow road was a highly contested and traveled highway that spring. A clash near Todd’s Tavern on May 7 allowed Confederate cavalry to delay Federal infantry, helping the Confederate infantry gain an advantage.

By May 8, Confederate infantry started digging in around Spotsylvania Court House. As Union General Warren’s V Corps came down Brock Road fighting erupted at Laurel Hill and across Spindle’s Farm. Using the topography for the advantage of his road-weary men, Warren prepared for attacks and rallied his troops. Central Virginia Battlefields Trust has been fortunate to preserve some of that land, now known as the Fifth Corps/Brock Road Tract. The Confederate lines held, were reinforced, and extended. The Union Army moved into a position, facing southeast and confronting the main Confederate line at that time.

On May 9, the Federal II Corps started on a detour to flank the Confederate defense. Swinging right at the Union flank, these divisions crossed the Po River, only to find the Confederates waiting there. After battling along the Po River, the II Corps withdrew the

following day. Between the battle area at the river to their next combat position lay approximately five miles as the crow flies, not always the same distance as historic or modern roads. The night of May 11, the II Corps marched in the rain along a treacherously muddy road. The soldiers were so weary that some tumbled to ground to sleep whenever the column halted in the darkness. At dawn, they attacked the Confederate’s Mule Shoe Salient. In the aftermath of the attack, medical staff noted that wounded from the II Corps suffered more and had to struggle harder to survive their injuries since they were so exhausted and hungry from their series of fights and marches.

Following the infamous and horrifying battle at the Bloody Angle on May 12, both Union and Confederate armies shifted their battle lines south and east, heading into the second week of combat around Spotsylvania Court House. Confederate General Heth’s salient was attacked by troops from Union General Burnside’s command.

Between May 13-16, Grant and Meade started shifting the Union Corps around the Confederate’s right flank.

On May 14, the Battle of Myer’s Hill occurred. The land at Myer’s Hill, including the 73 acres preserved by Central Virginia Battlefields Trust, has changed from open farm fields to woods and dense scrubby brush. The Ni River divided the armies, but Union troops plunged across, hoping to seize the high ground that would have given them access to the Confederate flank and

Terry Rensel (CVBT Executive Director) enjoys walking the battlefields and exploring “forgotten” aspects or stories from Civil War history.

CVBT has saved 73 acres at Myer’s Hill battlefield, the site of an important clash during the second week’s fighting around Spotsylvania Court House.

an open approach to Massaponax Church Road, a key thoroughfare through the countryside. Unsurprisingly, the Confederates fought for the high ground, and the day progressed with both sides attacking and counter-attacking over the farm fields and homestead.

The battle at Myer’s Hill effectively blocked the quick route for the Union army, forcing Grant and Meade to choose the “long way around,” but there was another countermarch first. Because they assumed the Confederates had pulled most of their troops out, Union Corps were ordered back to some of their original positions for another attack on the Mule Shoe. Yet another night march and more assaults on May 18 pushed the soldiers and officers to new limits, but their attacks did not succeed.

By May 19, the Union troops were moving south and east again when the Confederates made a surprise march and attacked at Harris Farm. The attack caused orders that had troops march to the site and counter-attack. The Confederate surprise at Harris Farm prevented Grant from accomplishing the day’s objectives and delayed the Union army. It also had serious consequences for the Confederates, resulting in General Lee’s final loss of confidence in his Second Corps commander, General Richard Ewell.

Despite over 31,000 casualties at Spotsylvania, neither army quit. The Overland Campaign shifted again toward the North Anna River, hammering the Army of Northern Virginia ever closer to Richmond. The battles around Spotsylvania Court House tested the tenacity of both sides as marches and counter-marches; attacks and counter-attacks moved corps and divisions over the landscape. The distances troops covered and road conditions just to get to the starting place for an attack add more to consider about the Civil War soldier’s combat experience. The movements around Spotsylvania offer a small, focused study on that subject.

There is so much more to the battles at Spotsylvania than the rainy attacks at The Angle, particularly the second week of the fighting, with major struggles at Myer’s Hill and Harris Farm. The research and battlefield preservation challenge meets us today as we try to recollect and save the hallowed ground of the extended battles, marches, and rallying points. There is so much to explore as we continue advancing

our understanding and appreciation of the experiences of soldiers in blue and gray.

Gaining this deeper understanding of the routes to battle, the midnight marches, and the long evacuation routes for the wounded has added more inspiration as I work for battlefield preservation. Whether driving or walking over these historic battlegrounds, I’m constantly aware of the distances and how that is an often-overlooked part of the battles.

There is so much more to explore through research and so many more tracts of land to preserve here in Central Virginia, especially around Spotsylvania Court House. Central Virginia Battlefields Trust has been

privileged to save hallowed ground at some lesser known sites along Brock Road, Po River, Myer’s Hill, and Harris Farm. We continue to pursue these stories that teach powerful lessons of courage and U.S. history. With your interest, help, and support we’ll be able to save more land and reveal more “forgotten” stories and historic experiences.

Terry Rensel serves as the Executive Director at Central Virginia Battlefields Trust. CVBT is dedicated to preserving hallowed ground at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. To learn more about this grassroots preservation non-profit, please visit: www.cvbt.org.

MAKER –

Harris Farm is quiet today, but in May 1864, it was the site of one of the last major engagements in the Spotsylvania area.

Lincoln Forum to Host “Zoom Symposium” in November, Then Return to Gettysburg For In-Person Forum in May 2021

The Lincoln Forum, compelled to postpone its 25th annual symposium at Gettysburg because of the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced it will host a oneday, live symposium on Zoom Saturday, November 14, from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Eastern Time.

The all-star lineup will include best-selling historian H. W. Brands discussing his forthcoming (October) joint biography of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, The Zealot and the Emancipator; writer Ted Widmer on his widely praised new book on President-elect Lincoln’s 1861 inaugural journey, Lincoln on the Verge, in a conversation with Forum Chair Harold Holzer; and journalist Edward Achorn, whose 2020 book Every Drop of Blood examines Lincoln’s second inauguration, in a conversation with Forum Chairman Emeritus Frank J. Williams.

The event will be free on Zoom to all up-to-date Lincoln Forum members. Applications for new memberships or renewals can be obtained on the website (www. thelincolnforum.org), or from Forum Treasurer Henry Ballone (treasurer@thelincolnforum.org).

“On one level, it is heartbreaking for us to interrupt an in-person tradition that dates back to 1995,” commented Chairman Holzer. “But the good news is that we have found a way for the Forum family to get together this fall to hear extraordinary historians, explore relevant issues, maintain our connections to each other and to the Lincoln field, and in the bargain protect our health and safety while the COVID crisis remains unresolved. Looking at the bright side, we are hoping this free event will attract more participants, and more new members, than ever.”

Holzer added that the Forum

would host a live springtime event May 21-23, 2021, at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg, and promised it would feature a delayed celebration of the organization’s silver anniversary.

The 2020 Zoom Forum will also feature a panel hosted and moderated by Forum Vice Chairman Jonathan W. White on “How Should We Now Teach Lincoln and the Civil War?” Joining Professor White, who teaches at Christopher Newport University, will be: prolific author William C. “Jack” Davis, who taught at Virginia Tech; the University of Virginia’s John L. Nau III Professor of Civil War history Caroline E. Janney; Oberlin College Assistant Professor of History and American Studies Tamika Nunley; and Professor Emeritus Craig L. Symonds of the U.S. Naval Academy, who taught Civil War courses at Annapolis and the U.S. Naval War College for more than 40 years.

Said Professor White: “As our culture begins to reflect huge changes in how we regard history and memory, the time is right to ask several generations of college instructors how most effectively to teach the Civil War to younger generations of students. It is cru cial that we engage young people in the importance of understand ing American history, and I am excited to speak with these ex pert panelists about how we can do that.”

The Forum will also present a panel devoted to Harriet Tubman, the “American Moses,” featur ing and moderated by Kathryn Harris, former library director at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, who specializes in Tubman portrayals. Joining her will be University of Texas at Austin historian Catherine Clinton, author of a noted 2005 Tubman biography; and University of Connecticut historian Manisha Sinha, au thor of the award-winning book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.

CHARLESTON IN THE WAR

100 Signi cant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War features newly restored images of scenes in the famed city, taken 1860–1865. The cameramen include the better-known, such as George N. Barnard and George S. Cook, as well as some lesser-known ones: Samuel Cooley, Charles Quinby, the partners Haas & Peale, Osborn & Durbec.

100 Signi cant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War features newly restored images of scenes in the famed city, taken 1860–1865. e cameramen include the better-known, such as George N. Barnard and George S. Cook, as well as some lesser-known ones: Samuel Cooley, Charles Quinby, the partners Haas & Peale, Osborn & Durbec.

Text by Stephen Davis and Jack Melton accompanies each featured photograph, describing the pictured scenes and the history surrounding them. e selected images depict a variety of settings: that portion of Charleston known as e Battery, the “Burnt District” (the area of the city destroyed by the Great Fire of December 1861), the Charleston Arsenal, and the many churches that allow Charlestonians to call theirs “the Holy City.” Special sections of this book are devoted to the huge Blakely guns imported from England by the Confederates and close-ups of Barnard’s views.

e history of Civil War Charleston goes back to e Defense of Charleston Harbor

Text by Stephen Davis and Jack Melton accompanies each featured photograph, describing the pictured scenes and the history surrounding them. The selected images depict a variety of settings: that portion of Charleston known as The Battery, the “Burnt District” (the area of the city destroyed by the Great Fire of December 1861), the Charleston Arsenal, and the many churches that allow Charlestonians to call theirs “the Holy City.” Special sections of this book are devoted to the huge Blakely guns imported from England by the Confederates and close-ups of Barnard’s views.

(1890) by John Johnson, Confederate major of engineers, and to Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-’61 (1876) by Capt. Abner Doubleday, Federal second-in-command. Since then Charlestonians have contributed to the history of their city, notably Robert N. Rosen and Richard W. Hatcher III. e historical text surrounding 100 Signi cant Photographs draws on these and other works. A unique feature is its reliance upon the writings of actual participants, such as Augustine T. Smythe (1842–1914) and Emma Edwards Holmes (1838–1910).

As a contribution to this literature, 100 Signi cant Civil War

All sessions will include an au dience Q & A on Zoom.

Photographs: Charleston in the War o ers rewards for all readers, from the casual novice to the serious student.

The history of Civil War Charleston goes back to The Defense of Charleston Harbor (1890) by John Johnson, Confederate major of engineers, and to Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-’61 (1876) by Capt. Abner Doubleday, Federal second-in-command. Since then Charlestonians have contributed to the history of their city, notably Robert N. Rosen and Richard W. Hatcher III. The historical text surrounding 100 Signi cant Photographs draws on these and other works. A unique feature is its reliance upon the writings of actual participants, such as Augustine T. Smythe (1842–1914) and Emma Edwards Holmes (1838–1910).

As a contribution to this literature, 100 Signi cant Civil War Photographs: Charleston in the War o ers rewards for all readers, from the casual novice to the serious student.

160 pages, Over 100 Photos, Maps, Index, Bibliography, Softcover.

ISBN: 978-1-61850-167-7

$19.95 + 3.50 S&H Order

Longtime Lieutenant David Duncan to Replace Lighthizer as American Battlefield Trust President

Following a unanimous vote by the organization’s Board of Trustees, longtime chief development officer David N. Duncan has been named the new president of the American Battlefield Trust. Duncan has spent more than two decades overseeing the Trust’s membership and development efforts that included raising nearly $240 million in private donations used to protect just under 45,000 acres of battlefield land. The appointment, effective October 1, 2020, comes after an eight-month search conducted by a leading national firm.

“As I take up this challenge and look to the future, I am energized and optimistic, even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, because I truly believe that we are accomplishing work vital to the future of our country,” said Duncan. “As we approach the nation’s Semiquincentennial in 2026, we have an unprecedented opportunity to combine historic preservation, modern technology, compelling educational content, and groundbreaking media delivery platforms to engage vast

audiences in learning about our nation’s history.”

“The selection of a new president is the most important decision a board can make, and we are fully confident in our choice,” said Chairman of the Board of Trustees Thomas H. Lauer.

“David Duncan was instrumental in the evolution of the Trust from its earliest days and many of its signal accomplishments over the last 20 years. We look forward to his leadership at a pivotal moment when the importance of telling the American story through its battlefields is greater than ever before. Our mission remains the same, to inspire Americans by preserving these special places and telling the stories of those who fought there.”

Duncan’s appointment as president comes following the retirement of James Lighthizer, the beloved figure who has led the Trust since late 1999 and was responsible for its growth from a modest organization into the nation’s foremost historic land preservation group and a leading voice for history education. A former

county executive and Maryland Secretary of Transportation, Lighthizer remains firmly committed to the organization, accepting a lifetime appointment to the Board of Trustees as president emeritus.

“There is no one at the Trust who has worked more closely with me than David,” said Lighthizer. “Thanks to countless substantive discussions between us about strategy, management, mission, fundraising, personnel, advocacy, culture and philosophy, and all the rest, he already has a deep knowledge of the functions of all departments, as well as the support of his colleagues. I have no doubt he will hit the ground running, and not miss a beat.”

A native Virginian, Duncan is a graduate of James Madison University. As the son of a respected and admired social studies teacher, his passion for history was cultivated from an early age, although he initially pursued a career in copywriting, serving as creative director at a small direct marketing agency that raised money for nonprofit and political

causes. As the loss of historic landscapes made headlines, particularly in Virginia during the mid-1990s, he joined the young Civil War Trust as a dues-paying member. Duncan had unsuccessfully offered his professional services to the organization on a pro-bono basis before Lighthizer was appointed president upon a merger of two related conservation groups. To ensure that his next offer made it to the new CEO’s desk, Duncan sent it via certified mail, requiring Lighthizer’s personal signature. Four interviews later, Duncan followed his passions and began overseeing all fundraising, membership, and development functions.

How Can You Best Support the Trust During this Transition?

As the Trust has no intention of slowing its preservation activities, donors will have ample opportunity to contribute to the acquisition of additional important battlefield landscapes. Beyond the impressive number of ambitious projects on the horizon, longtime members may also be interested in contributing to the Lighthizer Legacy Fund, which will enable future projects at battlefields hand-chosen by Jim for their central role in his achievements at the Trust and vision for its future. Please visit our website www.battlefields.org for more information.

David N. Duncan and James Lighthizer. Photo by Buddy Secor.

Civil War Correspondents Memorial Has Become Writer’s Legacy

by Bob Ruegsegger Civil War newspaper

correspondent George Alfred Townsend’s once pretentious mountain estate is now embraced by Gathland State Park at Crampton’s Gap in the South Mountain range near Sharpsburg, Md.

At twenty years of age, Townsend was the youngest of the Civil War correspondents. Originally, he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, then for James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald in 1861.

The New York Herald sent the 20-year-old reporter to cover General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign and Cedar Mountain in 1862.

Townsend did not have a high opinion of most of his co-workers at the Herald. He characterized them as “uneducated, flimsy-headed, often middle-aged, misplaced people.” They were, in his view, “not fit to describe a fire.”

Townsend used the pseudonym “Gath” in his battlefield reports. His pen name was derived from using his initials “GAT” and adding the letter “H.” When bylines (signatures) were later required by general order, the young

correspondent embraced the opportunity to capture public credit for his writing.

In August, soon after the Seven Days Battles and the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Townsend left for England, where his articles and lectures championed the Union cause. His lecture tour drew large audiences. Englishmen were interested in what the twenty-one-year-old American had to say. Townsend published his Campaigns of a Non-Combatant in England, in 1863.

His descriptions of battlefields and fortifications were accurate, vivid, and detailed. Townsend had flair; he typically set the stage geographically, and enhanced the setting with specifics.

When Townsend returned to New York in 1864, he was hired by the New York World to cover the concluding battles of the war; among them the overwhelming Union victory at the Battle of Five Forks, near Petersburg, in April 1865.

He gained additional prestige as a noteworthy writer for his reports on the assassination of President Lincoln and the escape and capture of the assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Following the war, George Townsend married Elizabeth Evans Rhodes. He became an independent journalist and remained one for the rest of his life. Townsend preferred writing about what interested him rather than “cranking out” articles. He did not syndicate himself.

Gath sold his work directly to a number of individual newspapers and averaged two columns per diem. He maintained a home in Washington, D.C., because of his keen interest in politics.

While doing research on the Maryland Campaign, specifically Antietam, he became enamored with the inspiring vista that South Mountain offered. In 1892, he purchased 110 acres around where the Battle of Crampton’s Gap was fought prior to the bloodbath at Antietam.

Townsend regarded the mountain site as the perfect place for a retreat to evade the pressures of his life as a journalist/writer in Washington, D.C.

“In his own way, he was as famous as Mark Twain. Everybody knew him,” said Dianne Wiebe, author of George Alfred Townsend and Gathland. “While we have his books, novels, and poems – especially poems, they never caught on the way Mark Twain’s [works] did,” she noted. “His best work was in the newspapers – columns.”

Townsend was content with his place in the world. Gath, as he called himself, took pride in being one of journalism’s “Young Turks.” He was popular with the public, financially successful, and highly respected by his colleagues. Townsend earned a fortune and spent it on his lavish mountain estate.

When he reached his 60’s, Gath began to review his life, assess his accomplishments, and consider his legacy. He was no longer making money. He missed the public acclaim and felt neglected by his friends. His children weren’t interested in preserving his journalistic legacy or inheriting his highland estate. No one had expressed interest in compiling his papers. Townsend began writing his memoirs but died before completing them.

“He was a good, good writer, but his literary work was mediocre,” said Dianne Wiebe. “He was left with this beautiful bunch of buildings. His money was running out,” she noted. “At this age, about 60, his health was fading. His wife was dying and taking a long time to do it.”

Seeing Mark Twain’s reputation skyrocket into the 20th century made Townsend recognize that he would probably be forgotten. Gath decided that he had to do something to guarantee that his memory would not fade into oblivion. He may have been old, sick, and broke, but he was determined not to be forgotten.

Townsend resolved that he would erect an impressive monument in the form of a huge arch to commemorate the Bohemian Brigade, the corps of war correspondents, writers, and artists assigned by the newspapers to cover the Civil War.

“Gath goes out to his wealthy chums and raises $5,000 – which was huge back then,” said Wiebe. “He designed the arch and took it to an architect. It took a year to build it. It was dedicated in 1896,” she said. “That was the

last hurrah – the last big thing.” The War Correspondents Memorial Arch, commissioned by Townsend, climbs 50 feet into the sky above South Mountain at Crampton’s Gap. The massive stone structure is 40 feet wide. Today Gath’s memorial arch,

The “Directory Tablet” is one of the stone tablets that list the names of 157 correspondents, artists, and photographers who covered the Civil War.

This plaque honors George Alfred Townsend for creating the only known memorial to newspapermen.

Townsend raised $5,000 to construct this arch. It is 50 feet tall and 40 feet wide.

This bobble-head figure depicts George Alfred Townsend who prided himself in being one of the “Young Turks” of journalism during and after the Civil War.

a National Historic Landmark, is maintained by the National Park Service. It is located in Maryland’s Gathland State Park.

Tablets attached to the memorial were inscribed with the names of 157 correspondents and artists who reported and illustrated nearly every Civil War event over the course of four years.

George Alfred Townsend included his own name in the list of war correspondents. Gath did not forget himself.

Note: While the grounds and pavilions at Gathland State Park are open to the public, the museums are presently closed due to COVID-19 considerations. The Appalachian National Scenic Trail traverses the park and passes the base of the War Correspondents Memorial Arch. The park is open from 8 a.m. until sunset.

Bob Ruegsegger is an American by birth and a Virginian. His assignments frequently take him to historic sites throughout Virginia, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Southeast. His favorite haunts include sites within Virginia’s Historic Triangle—Jamestown, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. Bob served briefly in the U.S. Navy. He is a retired educator and has been an active newspaper journalist for the last twenty years.

Deadlines for Advertising or Editorial Submissions is

This detail of Gath’s memorial arch illustrates the element of speed in reporting during the Civil War. Note the winged helmet of Mercury, the fleet-footed messenger of the gods.

The War Correspondents Memorial Arch was constructed as a permanent tribute to the newspaper correspondents, artists, and photographers of the Civil War. All photos by Bob Ruegsegger.

The following three questions were posted on the Civil War News Facebook page. Currently, the media narrative is to call the Confederate generals traitors, therefore, providing a sufficient reason to redesignate military bases named after them, and remove any monuments or statues, and rename streets, schools, and buildings memorializing them. While these are simple questions, the goal was to poll what people really think and understand.

Civil War News has over 73,000 Facebook followers. The response of 265 individuals who took the time to not only answer the questions but provide commentary represents a small percentage, but there is no doubt the folks who responded are passionate and fairly knowledgeable about the topic. Some had a hard time limiting their commentary.

The range of commentary provided additional food for thought. The responses indicated a near total lack of effective teaching about United States history. Both sides of the argument about treason and base naming made it evident by exposing the current educational system’s lack of dealing with America’s past.

The first two questions are directly linked, however, not everyone understands the difference. The comments were lightly edited for punctuation and grammar. Some off-topic responses were deleted, but no revision has been made to the relevant comments.

Here are the three questions our followers were asked:

1. Do you think Confederate generals were traitors?

2. Do you think Confederate generals committed treason?

3. Do you think military base names should be changed if named after Confederates?

Responses:

1. No: 233 Yes: 32

2. No: 233 Yes: 32

3. No: 231 Yes: 33

Facebook Comments

History has always drawn a distinction between separatists, seeking independence from a greater nation, and traitors who seek to overthrow a nation and take over. So no to all 3.

The question I ask to those who say traitor is this: Who was tried for treason and who was

Civil War News Facebook Poll

convicted of treason? No to all three questions.

No to all. States were sovereign and the founding fathers intentionally omitted any laws forbidding the secession of a state. The reason this was purposely done was to give states the right to leave a government that used tyranny as a means of control.

No. No. No. The people really should study their U.S. history.

No, no, and definitely no. It all has to start somewhere and say enough is enough.

No to all three. 1) Confederate generals were not traitors to their states 2) They did not commit treason because they were soldiers of their states akin to the National Guard. 3) Confederate generals were American generals after 1959.

No to all three. And quite frankly, I’m offended by those questions.

No to all three questions. We cannot place 21st century thinking on 19th-century people. Just as they would be appalled at some of the things our society views as OK today.

Fine line between a traitor and a patriot...all brave AMERICANS deserving of respect.

Funny to watch you all defend men who ruined their own states fighting for a cause to keep people from liberty by using them as slaves and then doubling down with the KKK, Jim Crow, and massive resistance. No, it was not just about slavery, but it was about keeping black people in their place of servitude and using racism as a tool. The South fought a war not to be free, but to keep others in bondage for perpetuity.

No to all three. One of my favorite quotes is by Ovid. He said “Treason doth never prosper, what is the reason? For if treason prospers, none dare call it treason.” Only recently, 155 years following the close of the Civil War are we having this debate (the three questions). A little late for this BS in my opinion.

No, no and no. Because it won’t end there—it’s just the beginning of a cultural revolution.

Definitely NOT! Now liberals are asking that schools quit teaching history. That would not

change any history, it would just result in more ignorant children. We should teach much more history so all students would know about the mistake’s mankind has made in the past.

No to all. States were sovereign and the founding fathers intentionally omitted any laws forbidding the secession of a state. The reason this was purposely done was to give states the right to leave a government that used tyranny as a means of control.

Yes, they committed treason and as such had to be pardoned for treason. Most of the military bases in question were hastily named at the beginning of WW2 by local governments. I don’t see any problem with renaming them.

States had the right to secede. A new country was formed. It was invaded. Confederate soldiers fought to defend it against that invasion.

They definitely were traitors. They violated their oath of allegiance.

When you take up arms against the nation and enter into open armed conflict, I would say you are in the midst of an act of treason.

If we accept they were [traitors], then we must also remove Washington; he was a traitor as was Thomas Jefferson and the others. They all fought for what they believed to be right. The Confederates didn’t want to remove government like Washington did, they just wanted to have a say in how their states were run.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Yes to all three, but only because winners make the history. The founding fathers were also traitors, but history views them much differently since America won that war.

Most people who study American history understand more about the reasons people fought for the south than modern day “cancel culturalists” who

seem to want to have the moral high ground. But historians also understand these are all controversial issues. Backed in a corner and made to answer with a simple yes or no, I’ll say NO on all three.

They fought for something they believed in. They were traitors and committed acts of treason in the same manner the Sons of Liberty and the Founding Fathers did. Thank God we won that war. Who knows where we’d be if we hadn’t?

I think a much better question to ask is, how many Confederate general officers were against secession, thinking it wasn’t legal.

I do believe they would be considered traitors, so yes to number 2 also, and I can definitely see a reason to change the names of the bases.

No. History is history. You can’t change what was. Perhaps some form of educational plaque should be put at each to explain the times. People need to learn their history.

The plaque at Fort Bragg could explain that Braxton Bragg was an inept Confederate general whose temperament cost him job after job following the war. Response: And a plaque at Lincoln’s crypt that explains the many crimes he committed on the people of the south.

Also, Lincoln’s violations of the U.S. Constitution. The Presidential oath of office that Lincoln swore to was “to preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the U.S. Secession of states was not prohibited by the U.S. Constitution at that time. And there were no laws against it. Therefore, it was completely legal.

By the same view, ...the colonial patriot was a traitor to the crown.

No to base changing, it’s our history, I believe that the Confederates thought they were right, it’s also our history, we won and that’s all there is to it. I could just scream at this business of changing our history and everything of who we are.

No, they were not traitors; it was not treason. Leave the base names alone.

Yes, yes and no. We cannot continue to erase our history. Like history or not, it is AMERICAN

HISTORY.

Yes, they were traitors. Yes they committed treason. And they along with all Confederates were pardoned of this crime. My humble opinion on number 3 is to leave them alone. If there is a reason to update them to a more modern “hero/icon’s name so be it. But I don’t believe they should be changed just because they were Confederates. All those men were Americans first and in the end.

I’m of the train of thought that, back then, States were still a separate and independent entity, or at least most people felt that way, so it was more defense of their home than treason against a country. I say no to all three.

If the Confederate generals were previously in the U.S. Military, resigned their commissions and served as Confederate generals...yes, they were traitors and committed treason. After the War, did they sign loyalty oaths and did President Johnson issue a pardon...yes...then they were welcomed back as citizens. Did some serve in the U.S. Military after...yes...then it is mute to continue saying that they are still traitors. Response: The problem with your statement is they felt they had to be faithful to their first duty which is home state and family, they resigned their commission in the U.S. but legally resigning is not committing treason because they were no longer bound to that oath and decided to follow their state which legally voted to secede.

US Army officer oath – 1830 to 1862: “I, _____, appointed a _____ in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve THEM honestly and faithfully against all THEIR enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the ----> rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States.” <--- I can find no period reference to the oath being viewed as a lifetime oath, meaning it applied up until separated from the service by resignation, dismissal or retirement. If there was an understanding that it was a true lifetime commitment, you would have had far fewer southerners with U.S.

commissions rushing to serve the CS military. No perpetuity clause in the Constitution (rejected in the Constitutional Convention), and the limitations on the power of government by the 10th Amendment, means no treason. Class dismissed.

NO, do you say Washington was a traitor and committed treason against the Crown? No, you call him a patriot! The Confederates were patriots for their region. No to renaming bases.

If you said yes, then you don’t support the constitution. Davis was not tried because he would have been exonerated by the constitution, so said the chief justice of the supreme court of the U.S. in 1866, when asked to indict Davis. Response: The southern people through their legislatures exercised their god given right to self-determination and were subsequently invaded by the U.S. army. Robert E Lee was asked by the Lincoln admin to lead an army to invade S.C., his answer is history, and I quote “I can’t believe a president would raise an army to invade his own country.” Sounds like tyranny to me. The southerner viewed the conflict as the second war of independence. Maybe you should have spent more time stopping your racist southern legislatures from erecting participation trophies on battlefields. Then the minimal parts of the southern cause that deserve a shred of dignity wouldn’t be so expendable.

Yes, to all. Based on what another responder outlines in his comments under section 3. Treason shall consist only in levying war against the United States. As West Point graduates they knew they were committing treason. I disagree with them not being tried but I understand why they weren’t. Response: Weird that West Point would actually teach the right of secession. Jefferson Davis was never tried and condemned for treason, while illegally imprisoned for 2 years without a conviction. As Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase stated “If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His [Jefferson Davis’] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason. Let’s just hide the past and pretend it didn’t happen. I’m sure that will fix everything. What freaking planet did I wake up to. Get a grip. Live today and stop trying to destroy this country by hiding its history. The hatred is just stupid.

Yes, yes, and yes. How can we glorify men who betrayed their oath of allegiance to the USA and fought to preserve slavery?

Thousands of U.S. soldiers died; due to the deeds of these despicable traitors. Would the war have happened at all if these turncoats had lived up to their oaths? Response: When they legally resigned their commission in the U.S. army they are no longer bound to that oath, so ultimately, they didn’t betray their oath, but decided to stay faithful to their first duty which is home state and family. How would the rebels have fared without, Lee, Johnson, Johnston, Longstreet, Stuart, Jackson and the rest of the West Point grads who betrayed their oaths. Honoring that oath would have saved hundreds of thousands lives. Resigning their commission is not defined as betrayal. So, I guess you would take up arms against your home state and family. What exactly would have saved thousands of lives is if the north recognized the rights of states to self-govern without the interference of a tyrannical central government and to recognize that they joined the union by free will and with the right to withdraw when they chose to do so when the union imposed its will on the sovereign states.

No to all of them...it is HISTORY, and our family are reenactors for the Union.

Yes x 3. Doesn’t change my appreciation or admiration for their battlefield skill, but yes to all three.

Had the Confederacy won the war, would they have rejoined the U.S., but with their slaves? No.

The U.S. never recognized their right to secede, but saw them as traitors to their flag, uniform, and country. Of course, they were traitors and the reason they are not treated as Washington and Revolutionary War vets is because they lost. Had they won, in the Confederacy at least, however that might look now, they would be treated as patriots. Seems a lot of folks are pretty mixed up on the definition of “patriot” in this country. Rename the bases. They were named after Confederates to curry favor in the racist south at the turn of the century through WW2, no other reason. Would like to say we are beyond that, but a quick review of these responses proves otherwise.

Yes. Under the U.S. Constitution, the Confederate generals were traitors. They should have been executed.

The Confederates attacked a Federal fort and started the War. Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them.

Legally resigning from the U.S. army means they are no longer bound by that oath which cannot be defined as treasonous; they chose to stay loyal to their home state and family which is their first duty. Tell me did Lincoln acknowledge the south’s right to secession? What rights did Lincoln have to blockade the waters if he didn’t recognize their seceded status? Why resupply Ft. Sumter to force South Carolina back into the union if he didn’t recognize secession? Why raise an army of 75,000 volunteers to invade his own country? If Lincoln refused to acknowledge secession, then Lincoln waged a war against his own country.

The Confederate generals and other soldiers were not traitors. The Confederate states seceded from the Union under the terms used in the original U.S. Declaration of Independence, which the U.S. sees as legal (though the British may have seen it different). Upon secession, the South formed a new country, a confederacy, where States were stronger than the central government. Officers in most cases resigned their commissions in the U.S. Army in order to stay with their home states or the Confederacy. Confederate officers were only bound by the new Confederate constitution and the laws of their state. Therefore, not traitors because they were citizens of a new country and fighting for their states. In the second inaugural address, Lincoln called for binding up the wounds of the nation, with malice toward none and justice for all. This is why there were not mass hangings of former officers of the Confederacy as a component of Reconstruction. Likewise, the same officers did not commit treason. You cannot commit treason against a country you are no longer a citizen of. Treason is a label, or as Ben Franklin said, “the rule by which the winners get to hang the losers.” Lincoln removed that purge from the rebuilding of our nation. Base names are for specific officers who had not only great leadership during the war, but also who had other accomplishments in their lives. There is no information presented that these base names were put in place to make a segment of the population fear or to try to repress that part of the population. They are there as honorifics and should remain.

Too judge a situation that I don’t know all the truth about is foolish. I know Robert E. Lee loved the U.S. but served for his home state. I have heard this war called “the War of Northern Aggression” so I don’t feel we know everything that happened. No to all three questions.

No to all three. Now, since others have already elaborated, I’ll toss my $0.02 worth in.

Question #1 is inextricably linked to question #2.

If Southern Generals did not commit “treason” then by definition they were not “traitors”.

There is a reason the federal government was afraid to take President Jefferson Davis into court and try him for treason.... and it had nothing to do with any sort of good will.

They didn’t want to risk losing in court what had been won on the battlefield.

Go read up on the Constitutional Convention, last agenda item of the day, for May 31, 1787.

Then accept that this was the agreement that was reached and what the States were agreeing to when they ratified the Constitution.

Finally, compare what was predicted in that debate with what Lincoln did in 1861, and try to parse out the difference.

Federalist 39 also makes for good reading and elaborates on what was envisioned as the only force holding a State in the union.

Simpleton accusations of “treason” and “traitor” are not proof of either and show just how little so many know of the history of this nation and the principles of its founding.

Now as for renaming of military bases that were named for Confederates—these bases are located in the South. Naming these bases after Southerners/ Confederates was a way of reconciling the regions of the country and putting the past behind

U.S. and we collectively went on to fight one war after another as a united country.

We have a diverse history that is bound up together now and, whether some like it or not, that history includes the secession of the Southern States and the resultant war that followed.

The ones demanding these names be changed are the very ones stirring up divisions in the country now and stoking disunity.

If ANYTHING, these base names (as well as memorials) need to remain in place specifically as a reminder of what happened before when the country reached a point of irreconcilable differences. Their very existence achieves that goal. It is incredibly stupid to go down that path as the ill will created will more than outweigh any perceived benefit a small factious group of agitators would gain at the expense of everyone else.

Signing of the United States Constitution with George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton (left to right in the foreground), painting Howard Chandler Christy.

The Story of Buck and Ball and a Note on Gettysburg

While the term “buck and ball” is often used when describing smoothbore musket ammunition in the Civil War, the use of such ammunition was not unique to that conflict. It has a long history.

By the time of the American Revolution, it was common practice to load buckshot, along with a musket ball, in the cartridges used in .69 (.27-.29 buckshot) and .75 (.30-.32 buckshot) caliber muskets. In June 1776, George Washington recommended that his men “load for the first fire, with one musket ball and four or eight buckshot according to the strength of their pieces.”

Buckshot recovered from

the walls of Nassau Hall in Princeton, where British soldiers were besieged during the January 3, 1777, battle, are on display in the museum collection of the Historical Society of Princeton; fired buckshot have been recovered during archaeological work at the Monmouth Court House battlefield. At Monmouth, Sir John Wrottesley, commanding the “first company of the first battalion of Guards” was grazed by a buckshot in close range fighting in a woodlot. As we all know, buck and ball became a standard load for .69 caliber smoothbore muskets by the time of the Civil War and was widely used during the first half of the conflict.

Many writers have assumed that adding buckshot to cartridges was a uniquely American practice. Research,

by Joe Bilby

however, related in detail in De Witt Bailey’s, Small Arms of the British Forces in America: 1664–1815 (Woonsocket, RI: Andrew Mobray, 2009), indicates that is not the case. Bailey, in his “must have” work for students of 18th and 19th century firearms use, noted that British forces, at least in America, were using “buck and ball” cartridges at least as early as 1756, when a record of ordnance supplies at Fort William Henry on the shore of Lake George included fifty pounds of buckshot. On the 1758 expedition against Fort Duquesne, the men of each regiment were instructed to “provide themselves with buckshot” which was available from the artillery train. In April 1758 a ton of buckshot was shipped to Albany.

In May 1776, British troops in Boston had 600,000 buck and

ball cartridges, with four buckshot loaded in each, available for use, and 1,344 pounds of buckshot was sent to Rhode Island in 1778. In 1760, North Carolina Provincials repelled a Cherokee attack using seven buckshot and the roundball; Warren and Halifax county, N.C. militiamen used that same load at the 1780 Battle of Camden. Other types of multiple projectile loads were not unknown as well. In another variant, at least one British sentry served on guard duty with his musket loaded with a ball cut into eight pieces. In 1755 Colonel (later General) James Wolfe advised his officers to have their men load “two or three bullets into their pieces.”

Although the rifle musket was predominant on the Gettysburg battlefield, there were older .69 caliber smoothbore muskets used by some regiments on both sides. When the 6th Wisconsin Infantry charged the railroad cut west of town on July 1, a number of the Badgers suffered buckshot wounds from smoothbore “buck and ball” rounds. One Yankee struggling with the 2nd Mississippi’s color bearer for that regiment’s flag had “a ball and three buckshot… through the skirts of my frock coat…”

Around 10% of the arms captured by the Union I Army Corps that day were smoothbores.

The New York and Pennsylvania regiments of the Irish Brigade used their smoothbores to good effect when they closed with the enemy on the slope of a stony hill adjacent to the Wheatfield, but perhaps the most significant smoothbore story at Gettysburg was that of the 12th New Jersey Infantry. While awaiting Pickett’s charge in their position at the “Inner Angle” on Cemetery Ridge, the Jerseymen disassembled their buck and ball cartridges creating massive ad hoc charges of fifteen or more buckshot for their Model 1842 muskets.

My own experiments with smoothbores indicate that the buckshot hits the ground about 75 yards away from the muzzle. The Jerseymen knew this. Although a general ordered them to open fire at 200 yards, the men of the 12th laid low until Confederate infantry came within fifty yards of their position, then delivered a massive volley into the 26th North Carolina, a regiment already battered on July 1, virtually destroying what remained of the unit. Years after the war, when the veterans of the 12th erected their Gettysburg monument, it was surmounted by one large sphere and three small ones and inscribed with the words “buck and ball.”

Gettysburg Today

My second topic for the day has nothing to do with black powder firearms but is Civil War related. As I write this Confederate monuments, mostly initially sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy between 1890 and 1920 and erected around the south are being taken down. Most were created to redeem the reputations of southern soldiers in the conflict, with a secondary mission of symbolizing the return of white control to the post-Reconstruction south. You will never see a monument to James Longstreet or William Mahone, as these former Confederate officers aided in Reconstruction.

While I would rather see explanatory material added to these monuments, their disposition is up to local authorities, I agree 100% with the Gettysburg Guides, however, who are protesting an item in HR Bill 7608 (see additional commentary on page 6) that would remove Confederate monuments from battlefield parks. The Guides (and I) wish the battlefield monuments, that tell a different story, be left alone. The Guides put it better than I:

“The monuments representing all of the soldiers who fought here are a critical component of interpreting these sacred grounds,” Fowler said. Veteran battlefield guide Deb Novotny said, “The monuments serve as tools for us to tell the story not only of this battle but of the struggle of our nation to heal itself after the war.”

Decorated combat veteran Elliott Ackerman, a columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote: “An area of our complex past that should be left untouched are battlefields... Blood consecrates a battlefield, and it is never the blood of only one side.”

Joseph G. Bilby received his BA and MA degrees in history from Seton Hall University and served as a lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Division in 1966–1967. He is Assistant Curator of the New Jersey National Guard and Militia Museum, a freelance writer and historical consultant and author or editor of 21 books and over 400 articles on N.J. and military history and firearms. He is also publications editor for the N.J. Civil War 150 Committee and edited the award winning New Jersey Goes to War. His latest book, New Jersey: A Military History, was published by Westholme Publishing in 2017. He has received an award for contributions to Monmouth County (N.J.) history and an Award of Merit from the N.J. Historical Commission for contributions to the state’s military history. Email at jgbilby44@aol.com.

More on Rations: Nutritional Deficiencies

What the Yankees don’t kill will die of disease or return home with a broken constitution… –Letter from William Hardy to his wife Sally, October 9, 1861.

It required real dedication to the cause to be fighting when the soldiers didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. Because of the lack of infrastructure such as the existing commissary and supply system of the North, the Confederate soldier had to do a lot of foraging for food during campaigns until regular supply lines were up and operational. This was not always a hardship, during the spring/summer campaign season, especially early in the war, there was at various times reasonable access to fresh carrots, corn,

onions, turnips, peas, squash, and potatoes.

Confederate soldiers were issued pork or beef (usually pork), corn meal, tea (off and on), sugar, and molasses to go with the occasionally foraged fresh vegetables. It was not always possible to forage off the countryside and became less so as the war dragged on and on. The most common vegetables regularly available to the Southern soldier were peas or beans.

While many Confederate Medical Department records were destroyed after the Civil War, adequate documentation exists on the Federal side in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion to evaluate the effects of the soldier’s poor diet on the outcome of the war.

These volumes detail diseases among Federal troops during the War and most of the significant data was true of the Confederate

army as well. The two sides were similar in that disease was a more common cause of death among troops than combat injuries.

According to the Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion 1861–1865 the chief culprits were fever (313,332) and diarrhea/dysentery (319,233); for some reason the two main forms of intestinal illness were lumped together statistically. The numbers affected were very evenly divided between the two categories, and are understated if anything. The impact of a poor diet on the health of Confederate soldiers in the field is widely acknowledged. The role played by nutrition was recognized at the time but not fully understood. While the commissary department oversaw the supply and distribution of rations, it was the medical department that performed field observations and made recommendations about the soldier’s diet and how it affected the army’s health. The other effects of vitamin deficiency were not fully appreciated by the medical community until the early twentieth century. The physicians on both sides tended to lump diet related nutritional deficiencies as “scorbutic diathesis.”

Perhaps in this regard the Confederates enjoyed a more enlightened understanding at the highest levels of the medical community, but if so it had little effect on improving the rations delivered to soldiers.

Confederate Medical Director Dr. William Carrington had from the start strongly recommended a diet that included fresh fruits and vegetables for the men in the field; in the Army of Tennessee, Dr. Samuel Stout ordered his hospital stewards to purchase large quantities of “vegetables, butter and eggs” to aid in the recovery of the injured and invalid.

The challenge was understood on the other side, and the Union commissary issued “anti-scorbutics” in the form of desiccated vegetables and potatoes. The process of drying the vegetables stripped them of the necessary ascorbate (vitamin C) to ward off scurvy and of course, potatoes are not particularly rich in vitamin C after being skinned and boiled.

Poor health in the Confederate Army was partially from the cumulative effects of a monotonous diet that left them either directly or indirectly more vulnerable to disease than their Union counterpart, and partially from poor sanitation. The reliance on salt pork and corn flour, though a traditional southern diet well known as “hogs and hominy” was partially at fault. The ongoing supply challenges played a role as well. The medical staffs and surgeons were too busy dealing with combat injuries and cases of “eruptive fevers” such as measles, chickenpox, smallpox, and mumps that were cutting a swath through entire companies, laying them to waste early in the war. Even if they could invest the necessary time investigating the role of the

poor diet to other diseases, what could be done? Physicians were at least partially aware of the effects of the poor diet, and they were reported accordingly.

For the Commissary it proved a challenge to get enough of any edible food delivered to the army, let alone the necessary variety to ensure long term health. One Mississippi soldier noted this problem in his diary, There was considerable sickness in Company C at Corinth. Measles and diarrhea were most annoying…the latter doubtless owing to bad water and unhealthy diet. From this passage it is fairly clear that even very early in the war, soldiers suspected the right culprits were responsible for their miseries.

One disease that was especially dreaded was scurvy. As long as there have been ships and extended voyages, scurvy has been a problem. It was noted by Hippocrates (460 B.C.E.) as a condition that benefited from herbal treatments. Scurvy was dreaded by seamen and explorers who found themselves on a diet of meat and biscuits for periods far longer than fresh fruits or vegetables could be preserved. It was also noted as a result of the potato blight in Ireland during the mid-1840s.

The use of citrus fruits by the British navy gave rise to the term ‘limey’ for their sailors, since their vessels often carried limes/ lemons for their seamen to eat as a preventative. British Naval surgeon James Lind had demonstrated the correlation of diet to various diseases by the treatment of scurvy with citrus fruits in the mid 1750s. By the eighteenth century, German ships were generally seen as free from scurvy because they issued sauerkraut.

Cooking in camp. Library of Congress.

The continued lack of vitamin C (which leads to scurvy) begins with poor wound healing, then bleeding and blackening of the gums, followed by severe pain in the extremities, and death. Humans and primates are omnivorous general feeders not specifically adapted to eat and digest either meat or plant material exclusively, though modern vegetarians may beg to differ. The human digestive system does not synthesize vitamin C from a diet whose primary nutrients are from meat alone, as most carnivores do, and must regularly include plant sources to obtain the necessary compounds for good health.

It is important to realize that the amount of nutrients from any one source of food supply is not the only determinant of its importance to an army, but rather the importance lies in a steady, consistent supply of a variety of nutrients in the dietary rations. Getting enough “calories” from a steady diet of fatty meat and fried hardtack or cornbread was not enough to maintain the health of a fighting force over the long haul.

Worse yet, a number would perish from these debilitating conditions alone, regardless of any other wound or ailment. There was little the physicians could do for it that produced any long term improvement. While

nutritional deficiencies from poor diet were one root cause of diarrhea/dysentery, after onset an improved diet seldom affected the chronic form of the disease to the point of full recovery. The soldier always remained susceptible to recurring attacks of intestinal disease afterwards. Physicians suspected a correlation between the role of nutrition to intestinal illnesses and scurvy, but could do very little about it given the number of battlefield injuries they had to contend with. While not exempt from intestinal problem themselves, the invading Union force used to call the condition “the Confederate disease,” that both sides rightly blamed on the poor diet and lack of sanitation in Army camps. Common medical treatments for diarrhea/ dysentery included opium pills,

laudanum (morphine in an alcohol base), or blue mass (mercury mixed with chalk). Other treatments were strychnine, turpentine, calomel, lead acetate, quinine, silver nitrate, camphor, whiskey, and ipecac. One doctor prescribed strips of raw beef liberally coated with vinegar, salt, and pepper. It proved about as effective in the long run as any of the other treatments listed.

Craig L. Barry was born in Charlottesville, Va. He holds his BA and Masters degrees from the University of North Carolina (Charlotte). Craig served The Watchdog Civil War Quarterly as Associate Editor and Editor from 2003–2017. The Watchdog published books and columns on 19th-century material and donated all funds from publications to

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battlefield preservation. He is the author of several books including The Civil War Musket: A Handbook for Historical Accuracy (2006, 2011), The Unfinished Fight: Essays on Confederate Material Culture Vol. I and II (2012, 2013) and four books in the Suppliers to the Confederacy series on English Arms & Accoutrements, Quartermaster stores and other European imports.

Letter to Lincoln

Readers may recall two previous articles (May and June of 2017) in this column dealing with The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Researchers now have even greater access to writings to and from our nation’s sixteenth president thanks to the Library of Congress’s crowdsourcing efforts and contributions from the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. Working under the ‘Letters to Lincoln’ heading, the collection contains over 40,000 documents, with 20,000 now digitized and

available online. The collection spans from 1774 to 1948 and covers military topics, family issues, and many other themes. Visit https://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/ letters-to-lincoln/ to read more on the scope of this mission.

Users may wish to begin their exploration at https://www.loc.gov/ collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/?q=%22by+the+people%22+volunteers. The image above illustrates the homepage and shows some of the varied search options available. For a look into Lincoln’s wartime

documents, this writer, after selecting the date option of ‘18601869,’ arrived at the following archives for each year of the American Civil War. The collection has 166 files from 1861, 308 from 1862, 1863 contains 189, 417 documents from 1864, and 98 from 1865. Diving into the deep end of the pool, this writer opted for 1864. Numerous sort options exist; date (oldest first) seems a desirable selection. One may need to experiment a little using various keywords to narrow down the search results. This writer searched using both ‘Sherman’ and ‘Savannah;’ either term will drill even deeper into the papers, but ‘Savannah’ obviously produced documents about Sherman’s capture of the city in December 1864.

The ability to view a digitized copy of the original document and then see a transcription serves as one of the high values in this site. As of this writing, volunteers have transcribed over 10,000 of the documents, and their work continues.

Most readers have heard of Sherman’s famous message sent to Lincoln, the one offering “… as a Christmas gift, the City of Savannah” (Image shown). Now, students can see Lincoln’s response to Sherman.

The terminology of the site offers descriptions like this one for Lincoln’s response.

‘Abraham Lincoln papers: Series 1. General Correspondence. 1833–1916: Abraham Lincoln to William T. Sherman, Monday, December 26, 1864 (Capture of Savannah, Georgia).’ First, look at the penmanship of Lincoln in the image shown. Next, and a most helpful tool, click on the ‘Show Text’ link above the image, and presented for the user, in adjacent fashion, the transcription and the original. (See image.) Try various search terms, select from the drill-down options, and enjoy the harvest. Several helpful tools exist.

• Index to Abraham Lincoln Papers: http:// lcweb2.loc.gov/

cgi-bin/ampage?collId=gdc3&fileName=scd0001_20101124004alpage. db; available in PDF or HTML formats.

• Library of Congress Finding Aid (PDF): https://findingaids.loc.gov/exist_collections/ead3pdf/mss/2009/ ms009304.pdf

• Provenance of the Abraham Lincoln Papers: the history of the papers, at https:// www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/ provenance/.

• David C. Mearns’s two-volume The Lincoln Papers circa 1948—available for purchase at booksellers, also serves as a helpful tool when researching Lincoln’s papers. Check https://www.worldcat. org for a copy of the two-volume set in a nearby library. Explore the writings of Lincoln, and enjoy continuing luck while

Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, instructor, and a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at mkscdr11@gmail.com, or to request speaking engagements, via his website www.civilwarhistorian.net. Follow Michael on Facebook www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer.

Digital Issues of CWN are available by subscription alone or with print plus CWN archives at CivilWarNews.com

Homepage for Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress.

Sherman’s Christmas Gift Message.

Lincoln’s written response to Sherman. researching the American Civil War.

Transcription and original of Lincoln’s letter to Sherman.

Preservation for Future Generations

A Glorious Charge: Armstrong’s Raid – Part 2

“We captured two pieces of artillery, destroyed a portion of the train, and took 213 prisoners” –C.S. Gen. Francis C. Armstrong

On August 30, 1862, C.S. Gen. Francis C. Armstrong’s cavalry

fought the Federals near Bolivar, Tenn., as part of his raid into west Tennessee. Both sides believed they won the skirmish and both sides considered the quartermaster depot at Jackson, Tenn., their ultimate objective.

Armstrong has the distinction of being the only Confederate general to fight on both sides during the War. In 1835, Armstrong was

born in Indian Territory where his father was stationed. In 1854, Armstrong accompanied his stepfather, future military governor of California, Gen. Persifor Smith, to the Territory of New Mexico. His gallantry in battle at Eagle Spring in 1855 earned him a commission. On July 21, 1861, Captain Armstrong led a Federal cavalry unit in the First Battle of Manassas. Armstrong then decided to change sides. He resigned his commission on August 10 and joined the Confederate Army. The Confederates began their raid by cutting up the Mobile and Ohio railroad. Then, on August 31, they turned their attention to the Mississippi Central Railroad, burning the trestle at Toone and cutting telegraph lines. The 45th Ill. pickets rushed down the tracks to warn their brethren at Medon Station. Using “cotton bales which happened to be lying around the station,” the men swiftly built breastworks to defend themselves from the coming onslaught and requested reinforcements from Jackson, about ten miles to the south.

Around 3 p.m. Armstrong’s raiders arrived in Medon. It was 150 men vs. approximately 1,200 to 1,500 dismounted cavalry. “The Rebels had gotten off their horses and left them in the woods. They approached the station by running behind trees and the few huts and houses that were scattered around the station; they would jump out and fire and dodge back again.”

The cotton bales were proving to be an effective shield. Local resident C.S. Pvt. John Hubbard, 7th Tenn. Cavalry, Company E, recalled that “without artillery we found it impossible to dislodge them. … It did so happen that Company E, in the charge on foot at the old brick church, passed over the same ground where it had been so royally entertained by the people of that vicinity the day it was mustered into service.”

Confederate Col. W.H. Jackson ordered Lt. Col., Frank Montgomery, 1st Miss. Cav., to take five companies and charge down Medon’s principal street. Not wishing to “expose the men to certain slaughter,” Montgomery

proposed to “reconnoiter the ground … [to] find a better place from which to make the assault.” As he was doing so, Montgomery spotted six companies of the U.S. 7th Mo. in the distance. Instead of fighting, Armstrong chose to retire.

On Aug. 31, U.S. Col. Elias S. Dennis was ordered to strike camp at Estenalula, Tenn., and rush to defend Jackson. Dennis previously had served as an Illinois State Senator and a Kansas Territory Marshall. His command consisted of 800 men from the 30th and 20th Ill., a section of two pieces of Gumbart’s artillery, and two companies of cavalry. Marching all day, the men spent the night in Denmark, Tenn.

On Sept. 1, the Battle of Britton Lane, Tenn., was fought when both sides discovered their enemy traveling on a short cut off the main road. The Federals spotted the Confederates first. Dennis realized he was outnumbered. He placed his two cannon in the center of the fourteen-foot-wide lane and set up a “defensive position along on a small ridge within a grove of trees, … surrounded on all sides by cornfields.”

The raiders were returning to Mississippi and assumed “that there would be no more fighting on this raid.” They were stunned, “when two pieces of artillery let loose two charges of grapeshot into our column at point-blank

range.” The Rebels charged to silence the cannon. The Federal infantry drove them back with their fire. The 2nd Mo. drew their sabers and charged. The Federals with their guns fell back 300 yards behind a fence. Again, the men charged, capturing the supply wagons. The 7th Tenn. charged on foot through the cornfield; few reached the fence before falling in a blaze of gunfire. Armstrong needed to capture the guns. He ordered C.S. Col. Wirth Adam’s cavalry to charge. “Adams, mounted on a beautiful cream-colored mare,” led the men “at racing speed … The fire was awful, and under the withering blast the head of our column went down. Those behind … spurred madly forward toward the sound of the guns, only to stumble and fall over their dead and wounded comrades and horses in front until the narrow lane was completely blocked. But the guns were won; … with no ammunition to use them and not strength enough to move them. I can never forget the picture of Col. Adams … as he looked around on his dead and dying men and the few survivors who had lived to follow him through.”

The 30th Ill. arrived and covered the Federal retreat. The battle had been raging for four hours. To his men’s surprise, Armstrong did not pursue the enemy. According to Hubbard,

U.S. Gen. Elias Smith Dennis. Colorization © 2020 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

C.S. Gen. Francis C. Armstrong. Colorization © 2020 civilwarincolor.com courtesy civilwarincolor.com/cwn. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

“The whole command was discouraged by the operations of this raid, and thought that, if we had gained anything at all, we had paid dearly for it.”

Both sides felt they had won. Dennis earned promotion to general based on his actions at Britton Lane. On his return, Armstrong reported that his men “are ever ready when an opportunity offers to punish the insolent invaders. I am more firmly than ever convinced that the enemy are prepared to evacuate Bolivar

whenever an advance of our army is made.”

However, Armstrong’s men would go on to question his abilities as a commander. One of Adam’s men asserted that, “The charge Of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was not more foolish or more glorious than the charge of Col. Wirt Adams’s Regiment of Confederate cavalry up Britton’s lane.”

Sources:

• Alexander, H. (1962). The

Armstrong Raid Including the Battles of Bolivar, Medon Station and Britton Lane. Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 21(1), 31-46.

• Black, Robert W. (2004). Cavalry Raids of the Civil War: Stackpole Books.

• Wyllie, Arthur. (1887). Hancock’s Diary: Or A History of the Second Tennessee Confederate Cavalry: Brandon Printing Company.

• Ford, C. Y., “Fighting With Sabers.” Confederate Veteran (Volume 30, 1922).

• Montgomery, Frank A. (1901). Reminiscences of A Mississippian in Peace And War: The Robert Clarke Company Press.

• Adair, John M. (1869). Historical Sketch of the Forty-Fifth Illinois Regiment: Carroll County Gazette Print.

• Brewer, James D. “Battle of Britton’s Lane”. Big Creek

Historical Association

• O.R. Series I, Volume XVII, Part I, Chap. XXIX Pgs 44 -51

Stephanie Hagiwara is the editor for Civil War in Color.com and Civil War in 3D.com. She also writes a column for History in Full Color. com that covers stories of photographs of historical interest from the 1850’s to the present. Her articles can be found on Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest.

By Lawrence E. Babits

Civil War Alphabet Quiz - F

F as in Fort, a second go around for the letter F

1. This fort defended the last open Atlantic blockade runner’s port

2. Fort where Grant got his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender”

3. Sherman’s march to the sea ended at this fort

4. Fort bombarded from nearby islands and forced to surrender April 1862

5. Union Petersburg fort called Fort Hell

6. Lincoln came under fire at this fort

7. Site of 54th Massachusetts charge

8. Name one of the two forts guarding access to Mobile Bay

9. Federals held this fort and kept C.S. troops from seizing Pensacola Navy Yard

10. “Massacre” of black soldiers occurred at this fort

Answers found on page 47.

American Battlefield Trust Announces 15 Members of 2020–2021 Youth Leadership Team

The newest members of the American Battlefield Trust’s Youth Leadership Team (YLT) are ready to engage classmates, neighbors, and local decision makers by taking on custom-designed projects that pursue preservation and interpretation goals and making a tangible impact in their communities.

“Today’s students are tomorrow’s historians and community leaders,” said Trust president James Lighthizer. “These young people are emerging leaders who have the potential to impact education, preservation, and visitation strategies and policy for decades to come. The Trust is proud to support and empower the work of this next generation of preservationists.”

Participants are selected through a competitive application process and successful candidates undergo training in many aspects of the Trust’s mission and in advocacy skills. Trust professional staff work with each student crafting a project to be undertaken in their local community, tailored to fit their passions and interests.

The inaugural YLT class last academic year was wildly successful, leading the program to expand by 50 percent for the upcoming cycle, thanks to a generous grant from the Pipkin Foundation. Also new for 2020–2021: a challenge grant from renowned historical fiction author and former American Battlefield Trust board member Jeff Shaara that will augment the baseline stipend for the best project with a storytelling focus.

Planned projects for the coming academic year include digital scavenger hunt apps for regional historic sites, infrastructure for physical and digital field trips to battlefields “lost” to the growth of major cities, investigations into War of 1812 “witness trees,” and promoting under-told historical narratives, like those of women, Black soldiers, and prisoners of war.

The full roster of the 2020 Youth Leadership Team includes: Benjamin Armus, 16, of Long Beach, N.Y.; Alex Azar, 17, of Bethesda, Md.; Ashley Alarcon, 17, of Estero, Fla.; Ashlyn O’Neill, 17, of Stewartstown, Penn.; Gabriella Gonzales, 15, of Farmington, N.M; Daniel Holt, 18, of Mt. Pleasant, S.C.; Francesca Lanese, 16, of Grove City, Ohio; Isaac Leichty, 16, of Lafayette, Ind.; Kellen Narke, 17, of Phoenixville, Penn.; Andrew Palmer, 17, of Oregon, Wisc.; Sahar Tartak, 16, of Great Neck, N.Y.; Drew Thompson, 18, of Richmond, Va.; Julia Vogt, 17, of Cary, Ill.; Ian Woolridge, 17, of Liberty, Mo; and Tiffany Yeung, 17, of West Lafayette, Ind.

Celebrating the Great American Outdoors Act

The future of America’s hallowed ground, the battlefields on which its formative conflicts were decided, is more secure after the “Great American Outdoors Act” became law at the beginning of August. This legislation to preserve and restore America’s public lands received significant bipartisan support in both houses of

Congress and from a vast coalition of conservation and stewardship organizations, including the American Battlefield Trust, the nation’s leading battlefield preservation organization, en route to its presidential signature.

The Great American Outdoors Act benefits battlefield preservation in two parallel ways. First, it fully and permanently funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) at the $900 million level annually via revenues from on-shore and off-shore energy development, both fossil and renewable energy operations, not already allocated by law to other programs. This large pool in turn funds the Battlefield Land Acquisition Grant Program, a matching grant program that has successfully saved more than 32,000 acres of America’s hallowed Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War battlefields. The Trust and its partner organizations leverage these targeted federal grants with individual donations to create public-private partnerships protecting key portions of battlefields outside National Park Service boundaries.

Further, the bill allocates $9 billion over five years to address the deferred maintenance backlog experienced by federal agencies, including the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Battlefield parks are included in this critical maintenance backlog, with millions of dollars’ worth of projects at dozens of battlefield parks, such as Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Yorktown. Completion of these projects will materially enhance these outdoor classrooms and ensure they are accessible to the public.

Save the West Woods at Antietam

One hundred and fifty-eight years ago this month, two great armies clashed in the Battle of Antietam. Now, the American Battlefield Trust is working to protect three additional acres of the West Woods, one of the most

fiercely contested areas during the battle. Once saved from the threat of development, this threeacre property in an area that is currently largely inaccessible to visitors will be transferred to the National Park Service for permanent protection within Antietam National Battlefield. The transaction must be completed and paid for by September 30, 2020, leaving the Trust only weeks to match a major donor’s gift and meet the $310,000 purchase price.

In describing the transaction, Trust President Jim Lighthizer stressed that “Privately owned property inside a national park can be bought and a modest home swiftly replaced with a much larger “McMansion.” In this case, before pursuing a sale on the open market, a thoughtful landowner approached the Trust to gauge our interest.”

Knowing the national park considered the land parcel a priority for acquisition, the Trust wasted no time in moving forward with the sale. A part of the land’s appeal is that it will provide visitor access to this portion of the West Woods for the first time; a state highway bisects the battlefield at this point and the far side lacked an access point for motorists, forcing pedestrians to cross the busy roadway unprotected.

New Hampshire Educator Named Teacher of the Year

As millions of families across the nation begin a school year

like no other, the American Battlefield Trust has named Erin Gagliardi, a middle school social studies specialist at Saint Thomas Aquinas School in Derry, N.H., as its Teacher of the Year.

“Capturing the attention of middle school students is notoriously difficult,” said Trust chief historian Garry Adelman, “Yet Erin manages it with grace and compassion. She uses the stories and figures of American history to help her charges grow into young men and women of character and instills in them a true love of learning.”

Teaching students across multiple grades requires that Gagliardi cover numerous periods in American history, from the colonial period and the Revolution with her fifth graders, through the Civil War with seventh graders, and up to the Cold War in eighth grade, plus units in geography and civics. Throughout it all, her passion for the subject truly shines through. Her students have even been known to request American Battlefield Trust memberships for birthday gifts.

From Battle Site to School: Interpreting Fort Henderson

With leadership from Trustee Paul Bryant Jr., the American Battlefield Trust worked alongside the Athens-Limestone Community Association to install six new interpretive signs at the site of Fort Henderson and Trinity School in Athens, Ala. In

Antietam’s West Woods. Wayne Hsieh.

Youth Leadership Team.

Prisoners of War signage at Trinity School, Athens, Ala.

United States Colored Troops who served at Fort Henderson, Athens, Ala..

an effort that spanned about 18 months, the Trust worked with the Limestone County Archivist and local historians to research, prepare narrative text, and procure archival photographs for the signs.

Known during the Civil War as the Athens Fort, and renamed in the 1890s to honor a local surveyor, Fort Henderson protected the Nashville and Decatur Railroad, a critical Union supply line during the Atlanta Campaign. The fort was garrisoned primarily by elements from the 106th, 110th, and 111th United States Colored Troops (USCT) along with the 2nd and 3rd Tennessee (Union) Cavalry. After a sharp two-day battle, the fort surrendered to Nathan Bedford Forrest in late September 1864, along with other fortifications north of

Athens at Sulphur Creek Trestle. Many USCTs from the 110th, which was recruited from Athens and Limestone County, were sent to Mobile and not repatriated until May 1865.

In the early 20th Century, Trinity School moved to the old USCT garrison site. Founded for former slaves by Mary Fletcher Wells at the end of the war, the school remained in operation until 1970. Former members of the 110th saw their children and grandchildren attend and, in some instances, return to teach at Trinity. Through the Jim Crow and segregation eras, Trinity was the only institution in Limestone County that offered African Americans an education. Today, two Trinity School structures remain, as does the fort’s southwest rampart and ditch.

The N-SSA is America’s oldest and largest Civil War shooting sports organization. Competitors shoot original or approved reproduction muskets, carbines and revolvers at breakable targets in a timed match. Some units even compete with cannons and mortars. Each team represents a specific Civil War regiment or unit and wears the uniform they wore over 150 years ago. Dedicated to preserving our history, period firearms competition and the camaraderie of team sports with friends and family, the N -SSA may be just right for you. For more information visit us online at www.n-ssa.org.

The Eagle’s Nest

The Graphic War highlights prints and printmakers from the Civil War discussing their meaning and most importantly, the print maker or artist’s goals.

Once the war began, both sides turned to symbolism to bolster their cause. The northern cause quickly adopted the flag as it’s rallying symbol. Currier and Ives, seemingly always in the forefront of recognizing and then exploiting the marketing potential of the American flag quickly produced three prints emphasizing the national emblem. The first two were published immediately after Fort Sumter fell. Appropriately titled Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor: From Fort Moultrie and similarly titled Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, both featured the desecration of the flag at the war’s flashpoint. Although Currier and Ives were not on the scene that April morning, they relied on New York illustrated newspapers for content.1 That same year, 1861, the New York lithographer published The Spirit of 61/God, Our Country and Liberty. In one powerful print, Currier linked God and country. To the very end of the war, Currier returned to the theme with The Flag of Our Union.2

Not to be outdone, several lithographic rivals joined in the “flag mania.” New York firms such as Sarony, Major, and Knapp; Goupil and Company; Kimmel and Forster, and the Philadelphia firm of M. H. Traubel quickly followed suit. The Connecticut firm, E. B. and E. C. Kellogg of Hartford, not to be outdone by the big city publishers, came out with an unusual and striking lithograph.

The firm had been established in 1830 and produced the usual stock images; young attractive women, political figures, mourning pieces, domestic scenes, Mexican War views, and occasional city views. When the war

came, they produced two fort scenes—Fort Sumter and Fort Hatteras, North Carolina, “from the Confederate vantage point.”3

They also produced “patriotic animal scenes,” for lack of a better description. One featured a mother hen with a flag for a comb squawking at a newly hatched chick, probably warning against seceding as it was titled “Uncle Sam, On Secession.” Another Kellogg entitled “Forward March!/Uncle Sam’s old Hens covering their chickens on the way to Richmond,” depicted ironclads steaming up the James

River with large, enveloping wings covering marching troops on either bank. At first glance all seems well, but upon close examination, it is evident that the artist has placed the bird’s head on the stern of the steamers and the bow on the bird’s rear!4

A more sensible and vitriolic lithograph was done in the first year of the war. This time a fierce American Eagle sits on an American flag nest of eggs, each egg representing a northern or southern state. The northern states have not hatched; the southern states are in various stages of

hatching (seceding!). Each southern “egg” has the name of its governor or a dignitary associated with that state. The eggs are arranged in the nest according to their geographical location in the country. Virginia has Governor Letcher depicted as a boar with a bunch of hatchlings; Maryland, not yet hatched is labeled “Bad Egg;” an unidentified animal has hatched from North Carolina; the eagle’s talons are grasping the hatching state of South Carolina, which reveals an open mouthed, probably venomous snake. The other talon is on Mississippi with a bear or boar emerging waving a Confederate Flag with the legend “Repudiated Bonds.” Missouri’s shell is cracked; Kentucky bears the legend “Addled;” Tennessee, “Rotten;” Beauregard is emerging from the Louisiana shell brandishing a saber and the Alabama shell is labeled “Yancey” and shows an alligator devouring an unknown person.

The print is entitled “The Eagle’s Nest/The Union! It Must and Shall Be Preserved.” Above all is a banner in the eagle’s beak that reads: “Annihilation to Traitors.”

Endnotes:

1. Harold Holzer, Mark E. Neely,

Jr. The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000, 2.

2. Bryan F. Le Beau. Currier & Ives: America Imagined. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001, 74-6.

3. Nancy Finlay, ed. Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830–1880. Hartford: The Connecticut Historical Society, 2009, 91.

4. Ibid., 93.

After 43 years in the museum field, Salvatore Cilella devotes his time collecting American prints and maps and writing. His last professional position was President and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. His most recent books are Upton’s Regulars: A History of the 121st New York Volunteers in the Civil War (U. Press Kansas, 2009). His two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, (U. of Tennessee Press, 2017), received the 2017–2018 American Civil War Museum’s Founders Award for outstanding editing of primary source materials. His latest book “Till Death Do Us Part,” an edit of Upton’s letters to his wife 1868–70, was published in May by the Oklahoma University Press.

“The Eagle’s Nest.” Print shows American eagle in its nest of the American flag, which holds 34 eggs representing the states; the eggs representing the Southern states are cracked, rotten, or have various animals being hatched from them; the eagle says “Annihilation to traitors.” Library of Congress.

Over 40 years Experience APPRAISALS

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Terry’s Patent Carbines

The Terry’s Patent Carbine, produced by the Birmingham firm of Calisher & Terry, as well as some other Birmingham contractors, was one of the more unique and innovative breechloading percussion arms to be developed in the mid-19th Century. The guns have always had a strong association with the Confederacy, primarily because two very famous Terry carbines are in the collection of the American Civil War Museum (formerly the Museum of the Confederacy). One gun belonged to Confederate President Jefferson Davis; the other belonged to famed Confederate cavalry general J.E.B. Stuart. Stuart’s gun was a 30-Bore Type II carbine that is serial numbered 4928, with the retailer name THOMAS BLISSETT – LIVERPOOL

engraved on top of the barrel. While documentable official deliveries of additional Terry carbines have not yet been located, a period Confederate document does establish an order for 5,000 Terry carbines. However, it is unclear how many may have actually been delivered to the Confederacy. It is possible that as many as 200 may have been purchased by the US Government.

In 1861, Henry Calisher traveled to New York with “200 Long Enfields,” which he offered for sale. It is not clear whether the guns were in fact Enfields, or if, in all probability, they were really Terry’s Patent carbines. Sources are split as to whether the guns were sold directly to the U.S. government or the firm of Schuyler, Hartley & Graham of New York.

It is well known that a number of high profile arms were delivered to the Confederacy through purchases at the Schuyler, Hartley & Graham storefront in New York, so it is quite possible that at least some Terry carbines went south, via “straw man” purchases by Southern sympathizers. Terry carbines may also have travelled to the Confederacy as speculative cargo in the holds of Confederate blockade runners as well. Speculative cargo were those items purchased by blockade runner owners and/or investors, who were allowed to import items for their own monetary gain. Recent discoveries in U.S. Maritime Court Records have revealed that many items never thought to be purchased by the Confederacy were in fact purchased as speculative cargo for resale upon their arrival in the South. Among these speculative weapons imports were Austrian Model 1851 cavalry carbines, as well as Austrian Model 1838 and Model 1842 muskets.

Terry’s Patent carbines have long been considered a rarely encountered arm, imported in very limited quantities by the Confederacy, and have been identified as such since the days of Claude Fuller & Richard Steuart’s Firearms of the Confederacy (pages 231-232 & Plate XXVI, Figure 3) and William Albaugh & Edward Simmons’ Confederate Arms (Plate 99, Figure 3). Recently, however, one document discovered within the McRae Papers provides confirmation that the Confederacy tried to acquire Terry’s Patent carbines; in my mind absolutely proving the Confederacy probably received at least a handful of these guns beyond the samples delivered to J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis. The document is a four-page letter from Colin McRae to an unknown recipient. The letter was sent from Paris and is dated December 3, 1863. McRae’s letter makes some interesting requests and reads in part:

(see letter in text box)

“…I ask you to make the following inquiries which I think you can do through Messrs. Quilter…To wit:

250 Tons best saltpeter

100 Tons Lead

20,000 Enfield Rifles such as are used in the British Army, with bayonet + implements complete + packed in Lead lined cases. [What is meant by implements, is moulds, nipple keys + extra nipples./

5,000 Carbines, Terry’s Patent, + the best description of that arm that is made.

5,000 Slings for same

500,000 Cartridges for do, best quality.

10,000 Pistols. Adams’ Patent, the best description of that arm that is made.

1,000,000 Cartridges for same.

Belts, Holsters and pouches for the pistols complete. The pistols + carbines to be packed in lead lined cases…

Mr. Quilter probably knows Mr. Adams, the pistol manufacturer, if so, he can put an offer with him direct.”

The letter goes on, but from the contents quoted above, the following is clear. Mr. William Quilter, a London accountant intimately involved with S. Isaac, Campbell & Company, was to make inquiries about obtaining the usual Pattern 1853 Enfields the Confederacy had already been purchasing, but also to obtain some 5,000 Calisher & Terry breech loading carbines and 10,000 Adams revolvers. A handful of Terry’s patent carbines are known with Confederate provenance suggesting that, at the very least, a small shipment of those guns did arrive; possibly as samples for a larger, future order.

Calisher & Terry apparently tried to make the Adams revolvers for this order as well. A very small number (really only a handful) of Calisher & Terry made Adams revolvers in their own special C-prefixed serial number range of C10X,XXX are known. It is believed by most English arms researchers that no more than 200 Adams Patent revolvers were produced by Calisher & Terry. Due to the extreme scarcity of potential Confederate purchased Calisher & Terry carbines and the very few Calisher & Terry Adams revolvers known, it is my belief that the order was aborted long before it was completed.

I do not know why but would surmise that it was due to a number of factors. First, the Confederacy suffered a series of major military reverses during the summer of 1863, bringing the potential for the Confederacy’s ability to fight the north to a stalemate or a negotiated end to the war into question. Secondly, Confederate economic fortunes were also waning during this period. Due to the blockade and inability to export cotton, the south’s only cash crop, it was getting difficult to raise cash or acquire credit. Many of the South’s English creditors were starting to become nervous and were even refusing to extend

additional credit. I think all these factors resulted in the inability of the Confederacy to obtain the necessary financing to complete the order with Calisher & Terry, which resulted in the contract being cancelled before a large number of revolvers or carbines were produced and delivered.

William Terry’s patent for a bolt-action, breechloading “Terry’s Patent Carbine” was issued on April 7, 1856. The design, as slightly modified by Henry Calisher, was submitted to the British Board of Ordnance breechloading carbine trials in 1857; in December 1858 the Terry Carbine was approved for limited issue, with all the firearms ordered being issued to the 18th Hussars. These first contract Terry carbines were “Type I” carbines, which were 26-Bore (.568 caliber) rifled with 3 grooves. The carbines were also equipped with a sling bar and ring on the side of the stock, opposite the lock. The guns were marked with the usual British War Department ordnance ownership marks, including a Crown/VR to the rear of the lock and British military proofs on the breech. The total number ordered for the 18th Hussars is not known, but the regiment numbered some 700 men at the time of issue, so it is estimated this initial order was for between 700-1,000 carbines. These carbines remained in use with the 18th Hussars through 1864, when the guns were refurbished at the British repairing and refitting arsenal at Pimlico and subsequently issued to the South African Cape Mounted Rifles, who used the guns through about 1870.

A new pattern of Terry carbine was approved in November 1860; these Type II carbines were typified by a new 30-Bore (.539) caliber with 5-groove rifling and a rate of twist of 1 turn in 36-inches. The rear most barrel band was eliminated and replaced with a flat key to secure

the barrel to the stock, along with an action screw in the bottom of the gun and a single upper barrel band. A new rear sight was also adopted, replacing the previously used multi-leaf rear sight with a new long base “Enfield” style sight similar to that adopted for the Pattern 1861 Artillery carbine. The new pattern guns were also somewhat lighter in overall construction with lighter, thinner stocks and an overall length that was 1-inch shorter. These guns were produced between 1860 and 1861 for the British government, with the majority going to New Zealand for their militia, as well as to Australian provincial police departments, including New South Wales and Queensland.

In 1861, a final pattern of the Terry carbine was adopted for military use, the Type III. The only difference between the Type II and Type III carbines was a change to a non-snagging Baddeley patent barrel band on the new Type III carbines, and the removal of the upper sling swivel. While Calisher & Terry were producing the carbines under their British military and provincial government contracts, they were also producing commercial rifles and carbines, in both “military” and sporting configurations.

Total production of Calisher & Terry carbines is not known but based upon known inventories and their relatively limited survival somewhere between 5,000 and an absolute maximum of about 10,000 total carbines and rifles were manufactured. The guns may not have been serial numbered in consecutive order, and some gaps may exist. Calisher & Terry took advantage of the Birmingham gun trade to produce enough guns to fill their military contracts; these guns are marked with the typical TOWER mark with the date of manufacture on the lock.

The custom of assigning serial number ranges to different manufacturers was well established by other English gunmakers that licensed their patents. The bestknown example being Robert Adams, who issued specific serial number ranges to makers like William Tranter, Joseph Brazier, the London Armory Company and others, including Calisher & Terry. This results in odd gaps in the serial number sequence and makes dating Adams revolvers solely by serial number problematic, as number 10,000 and 20,000 might was have been produced concurrently, but by different makers. It appears that none of the longer barreled “sporting rifles” were ever ordered by any government entity, but some surely saw use in the hands of

Overall obverse view of Terry’s Patent Carbine #8802, the pattern that was contracted for by the Confederacy

number range of potential deliveries. All photos by Tim Prince.

Overall reverse view of the Terry Carbine #8802 private citizens and militiamen, primarily in New Zealand. All New Zealand militia used arms (whether provided by the British Government or via private purchases of commercial arms) are marked on their buttplates with an NZ and an inventory number. The Terry carbines used by Australian provincial police are also marked on their buttplates with similar ownership markings. This means that only those carbines bearing no British military marks or other territorial or provincial marks can be considered as potential Civil War imported carbines. These would have been commercially proved guns, manufactured for the export and commercial retail markets, and would not have had the sling bar and ring, as these were only included on British Government purchased carbines.

The Type II Terry’s Patent carbine produced by Calisher & Terry was manufactured at their Birmingham workshops, located at 22-24 Whittall Street and by some Birmingham contractors. The firm moved into that location in 1861 and remained there until they went out of business in 1869–70. The “Door Bolt Breech-Loading Carbine” as it was more popularly known, was manufactured with a 21-inch barrel of 30-Bore (.539 caliber) with a 1 turn in 36-inches twist. The carbines had an overall length of about 34 inches and weighed approximately 6 pounds, 4 ounces. The gun was loaded by pulling the action operating handle out, away from the breech, rotating it upwards about 90-degrees, and pulling it back. This opened the primitive bolt and allowed insertion of a self-consuming combustible paper cartridge into the breech. Pushing the handle forward allowed the bolt plunger to insert the cartridge in the throat of the barrel and sealed the breech. Rotating the handle back down and folding it in secured the bolt and locked the action closed.

in

and

the serial

Views of the operation of the breech lever of the Terry Carbine.

Top view of the breech and rear barrel area of the Terry Carbine with details showing the barrel markings.

Rear view of the Terry carbine’s breech operation lever in the open position. A standard percussion cap was then placed on the cone (nipple) and the carbine was ready to fire.

The commercial guns were manufactured with a sling swivel on the upper barrel band and another one screwed into the toe of the stock. A cleaning rod was carried in the channel under the barrel and an extension with an integral cleaning jag was stored in the buttstock under an iron trapdoor. The iron mounted guns were blued with color casehardened locks. A snap cap (nipple protector) was attached to a small mounting stud, forward of the triggerguard, via a teardrop shaped brass chain. The stocks were varnished walnut and some

commercial guns had checkered wrists and forends like many Volunteer Rifles of the era, while the military contract guns invariably had plain stocks.

The Terry’s Patent carbine (Type II) pictured here is a classic example of the “Door Bolt Carbine” variant that would have seen importation and use during the American Civil War. The carbine is the same pattern as the two owned by J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis. The gun is clearly marked on the lock plate, forward of the hammer: CALISHER & TERRY. LONDON.; the top of the breech is crisply marked: TERRY’S PATENT 30 BORE behind the bolster. The top of the

buyers, based upon the December 1863 McRae order.

Terry carbines that have real Civil War provenance or the potential to have been a legitimate Civil War import are extremely scarce and rarely appear on the collector market for sale. Unfortunately, there are no known C.S. or U.S. markings that can be used to confirm Civil War use, but the preceding information should allow the potential collector to rule out any Terry Carbines that could not have seen Civil War service.

Tim Prince is a full-time dealer in fine & collectible military arms from the Colonial Period through WWII. He operates College Hill Arsenal, a web-based antique arms retail site. A long time collector & researcher, Tim has been a contributing author to two major book projects about Civil War era arms including The English Connection and a new book on southern retailer marked and Confederate used shotguns. Tim is also a featured Arms & Militaria appraiser on the PBS Series Antiques Roadshow.

barrel is additionally marked, forward of the rear sight: CALISHER & TERRY. MAKERS TO H.M. WAR DEPARTMENT. The serial number engraved on the triggerguard tang is 8802 and the maker’s initials C&T are stamped in the wood behind the triggerguard.

The serial number is well within the range of Civil War era manufacture and represents a potential Confederate purchase. A known Terry Carbine dated 1865 in the Springfield Armory collection is in the 10,XXX serial number range, suggesting that this particular gun, #8802, was likely produced sometime in 1864; exactly when these guns would have been in production for southern

Lock area of the Terry Carbine with inset showing the lock markings.

By Jack W. Melton Jr.

Hidden Evidence

A Look Inside Civil War Artillery Projectiles

"Through Jack’s superb photography; the collector and professional can now view an extensive exposure to sectioned projectiles. This is new for the average person in that for the first time since radiography; one can examine the internal makeup of a shell."

CWO4 John D. Bartleson Jr., U.S. Navy EOD

Author of Civil War Explosive Ordnance 1861–1865

6-PounderSphericalCaseShot

What do they say?

Jack Melton’s latest endeavor, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book, is a remarkable addition to Civil War artillery ammunition literature. For archaeologists and collectors the clearly written text and the excellent photographs provide a wealth of information to properly identify recovered shells and burst fragments. For bomb squad and EOD specialists this book should be on every units’ shelf. The material found in these pages will help EOD personnel identify what has been found, whether or not it is dangerous, and how to inert the round without the necessity of destroying an important historic object. This book takes Civil War artillery ammunition studies to a new level.

Douglas Scott Adjunct Research Faculty, Colorado Mesa University. Author of Uncovering History: Archaeological Investigations of the Little Bighorn.

Wow. I have been reading a lot of different books on ordnance from this era, but this one takes the cake. Most of the other books drift off in directions that are not helpful with the ordnance specific information I am usually looking for. But this book stays on task and topic from start to finish.

flame’scommunicationchannel.Theblackpowderburstingchargewaspouredinloosearoundthebullets.Thismethoddid notworkverywellandoftenonlysucceededinblowingthefusesout.Projectilesfilledwithbulletsusedascaseshotarerare. Thisspecimenwasrecovered,alongwithotherConfederateandUnionprojectiles,fromthepost-CivilWardumpsitelocated neartheConfederatePowderWorksinAugusta,Georgia.

Inthisexample,riflebulletswereutilizedasthecaseshotmaterialincluding3-ring.58caliberbullets,3-ring.69caliberbul lets,andU.S.ring-tailSharpsbullets.IthasabrassBormannsupportplug(underplug)thatiscountersunkonbothsidesof

• 392 pages of full color photographs with descriptions

• Covers projectiles, fuses, canister, grapeshot and more

• 850 photos, drawings, radiographs, patents and maps

• A must for every serious artillery enthusiast

or

Tom Gersbeck

MFS, Graduate Faculty, Arson-Explosives Investigation (AEI), School of Forensic Sciences, Oklahoma State University

Jack Melton’s new book Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book, promises to be one of the most important volumes on Civil War artillery in recent times. Anyone who has studied the wide variety of Civil War projectiles knows that what is inside is just as important, and maybe more so, than what is outside the shell. In this book, cutaway shells are graphically explained with superb color photographs and detailed notes. They reveal important details and differences in a variety of similar projectiles that tell us U.S. from C.S. and between type variations, in a way that no other approach has ever done. It is supremely helpful in explaining to others just how a shell works, whether it is still dangerous or not, and why.

Les Jensen

Former Curator of the Museum of the Confederacy

Perspectives on Sharpsburg – Phase Three: The Final Crisis

The savage back-and-forth struggle at the north and center ground to a halt by early afternoon. On the right, Confederate numbers were much reduced as troops were stripped away to face emergencies elsewhere; however, the remaining forces here had thwarted several Federal efforts to cross the Antietam and were still holding on. Would the next assault succeed? Would the Federals manage to cross the creek at the lower bridge and nearby fords and move up the slope? Could the Confederates form a force sufficient to block them on the plateau east of the Sharpsburg, or would the attackers break the stalemate and deal a crushing blow to Lee north of the Potomac?

In this final installment on the battle at Sharpsburg, we will hear from some Confederate officers as the Army of Northern Virginia struggles to halt the attack against its right with regiments already on the scene, with worn-down troops at the end of a 17-mile march, and with artillery units cobbled together to brace the weary and thinned-out infantry.

Brig. Gen. Robert Toombs defended the lower bridge and, for as long as possible, delayed the Federal effort to cross the creek. From the start, Toombs was short-handed. Two of his four regiments were away guarding a wagon train; in the remaining two Toombs counted only about 400 men; a third regiment, borrowed from another brigade, numbered “scarcely 100 muskets,” according to Toombs. These infantrymen, backed by three artillery batteries, stood against a Federal corps under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside.

In his report Toombs described the terrain and its tactical significance. “The ground descended gently to the margin of the river, covered with a narrow strip of woods, affording slight protection to the troops. Its chief strength lay in the fact that, from the nature of the ground on the other side, the enemy were compelled to approach mainly by the road which led up the river for near 300 paces, parallel to my line of battle, and distant therefrom from 50 to 150 feet, thus exposing his flank to a destructive fire the most of that distance.”

The defenders made the most of this advantage. “At between 9 and 10 o’clock the enemy made his first attempt to carry

GEORGIA’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

In Honor of a Fallen Nation

Gould B. Hagler, Jr.

This unique work contains a complete photographic record of Georgia’s memorials to the Confederacy, a full transcription of the words engraved upon them, and carefully-researched information about the monuments and the organizations which built them. These works of art and their eloquent inscriptions express a nation’s profound grief, praise the soldiers’ bravery and patriotism, and pay homage to the cause for which they fought.

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Once across at these points, and after a final rush across the bridge, the Federals were in position to attack the Georgians’ right flank and rear, as well as their front. Toombs withdrew to a position designated earlier by his division commander, Maj. Gen. David R. Jones.

15,000 men.”

the bridge by a rapid assault, and was repulsed with great slaughter, and at irregular intervals, up to about 1 o’clock, made four other attempts of the same kind, all of which were gallantly met and successfully repulsed by the Twentieth and Second Georgia.”

“After these repeated disastrous repulses,” Toombs continued, “the enemy, despairing of wresting the bridge from the grasp of its heroic defenders…, turned his attention to the fords [downstream from the bridge], and commenced moving fresh troops in that direction by his left flank.” Toombs lacked the men to protect these crossings and no re-enforcements were available.

So now the Yankees are across the Antietam, but before they move up the hill, let’s go back to 6:30 a.m., when Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill, still at Harpers Ferry, received an urgent message from Lee: March to Sharpsburg without delay. Hill reported that his division left the Ferry an hour later. Hill drove his men at a frenzied pace. Many hundreds fell by the way. Forty percent of his force of 5,000, and perhaps more, did not appear in time to fight.

In his report Hill stated: “My troops were not in a moment too soon. The enemy had already advanced in three lines, had broken through Jones’ division, captured McIntosh’s guns, and were in the full tide of success.” Hill wrote that his brave men charged “with a yell of defiance” and stopped the enemy’s advance. “The three brigades of my division actively engaged did not number over 2,000 men, and these, with the help of my splendid batteries, drove back Burnside’s corps of

Reports for two of the Hill’s brigades are contained in the Official Records. Brig. Gen. James Archer wrote that during the march from Harpers Ferry “many of the men fell, exhausted from the march…, so that when the four regiments of my brigade reached the battle-field there were only 350 men.” He re-formed his line after some initial confusion, then moved forward with this fraction of his brigade through a narrow cornfield and across a wider plowed field against Federals positioned behind a stone fence. “In passing over the short distance of 250 yards…, I lost nearly one-third of my already greatly reduced command, but it rushed forward alone at double-quick, giving the enemy but little time to estimate its small numbers, and drove him from his strong position.” Archer concluded by stating that “It was now nearly sunset” and reported casualties of 15 killed and 90 wounded.

Col. James H. Lane, commanding Brig. Gen. Lawrence Branch’s Brigade after Branch was killed, had little to say about the brigade’s actions during this phase of the battle. His brief report stated that the “three regiments principally engaged… fought well, and assisted in driving back three separate and distinct columns of the enemy.”

The reports of Hill, Archer, and Lane made little mention of General Jones’s division, which stood to the left of the line formed by Hill’s brigades. Hill wrote that when he reached the battlefield he conferred with Jones about the situation; that Jones’s division had been strengthened by a battery belonging to Hill; and that the enemy had already broken through when Hill arrived. Archer mentioned only that Toombs’s brigade, of Jones’s division, was on his left when he joined the fight. Lane did not mention Jones at all.

An officer in Toombs’s brigade, Col. Henry Benning, presented a different perspective in an article written 26 years later. Benning described how this brigade arrived just as Jones’s other units were breaking. Toombs’s Georgians struck the Federals with great force. “In ten or fifteen minutes,” he wrote, “[the Federal] line showed signs of wavering.” In the face of this deadly fire, and a sudden blast of artillery, “they broke and ran under the hill, and were out of sight in less than a minute.”

“These men…did all the fighting at the place where the enemy first broke, and nearly all afterwards,” Benning wrote. “There Brig.

Gen. Robert Toombs. Library of Congress.

Gen. A. P. Hill. Library of Congress.

were some troops on our right in the corn…, and others of A.P. Hill’s troops came up before night, but none of them had much part in the fight; none of them had any part in first breaking of the line.”

Toombs himself wrote of his brigade’s role when it re-entered the fray after withdrawing from the creek. He observed the crisis as the Federals pursued the disorganized Confederates toward the village. “A retreat would have left the town of Sharpsburg and General Longstreet’s rear open to the enemy, and it was inadmissible. I, therefore, with less than one-fifth of the enemy’s numbers, determined to give battle, and immediately and rapidly formed my line of battle…within 100 paces of the enemy’s lines.” The fire of Toombs’s men, supported by troops from another of Jones’s brigades, repelled the advancing Federals, who broke and “fled in confusion toward the river and bridge….”

It took more than muskets and bayonets, of course, to stymie the attack. Lee’s artillerymen also played a critical role. In his memoirs, General Longstreet listed seven individual batteries that were in the fray and, in addition, named three artillery battalions whose commanders “found places for parts of their batteries, ammunition replenished.” With the exception of three batteries under A.P. Hill, all these units had been hotly engaged all day and had lost many men, horses, and guns. Officers writing soon after the

army rather than destroy Lee’s, McClellan refused to commit the fresh troops. He sent nothing but a single battery. Burnside, he said, must hold his ground until dark without additional support. Burnside did hold on, but could do no more.

The bloody day ended in a costly stalemate. Lee retreated on Sept. 19, along the road to Boteler’s Ford on the Potomac, a road held open thanks to A.P. Hill, Robert Toombs…and George McClellan.

Sources:

The reports of all the officers named are in the Official Records, Series I, Vol. XIX, Part I. Benning’s account is in Vol. 16 of the Southern Historical Society Papers. Longstreet’s memoirs, From Manassas to Appomattox, were first published in 1896. Sears’s Landscape Turned Red:

The Battle of Antietam was published in 1983 by Ticknor & Fields. Sears’s battlefield maps diagram the various wooded areas and fields, and show how different fields were used—corn, orchards, grass, etc. These illustrations are a great aid for the reader trying to understand the officers’ descriptions of the action.

Gould Hagler is a retired lobbyist living in Dunwoody, Ga. He is a past president of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table and the author of Georgia’s Confederate Monuments: In Honor of a Fallen Nation, published by Mercer University Press in 2014. Hagler speaks frequently on this topic and others related to different aspects of the Civil War and has been a regular contributor to CWN since 2016. He can be reached at gould.hagler@gmail.com

battle and later had different perspectives on the counter-attack, and had varying views on how to apportion credit between Jones’s Division and Hill’s. This is inevitable. The commanders stood at different places on this confusing battlefield, commanded different men, and saw different things. Modern historians also have assigned varying measures of credit to the two Confederate divisions. This also is to be expected. However, to a large degree the Confederate’s success is due to another commander: Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan.

Lee’s force was stretched to the very limit. Toombs’s men held the enemy for hours, and re-entered the fight after retreating up the slope. The remainder of Jones’s Division was falling back in confusion. Hill’s men marched all day and entered the battle the moment they arrived. Nearly every Southern soldier was engaged in the desperate struggle. McClellan, in contrast, held a significant part of his army in reserve.

The Confederate counterattack was succeeding; Burnside was now hard pressed. He asked McClellan for more infantry and artillery. According to Stephen Sears, 5,500 men were readily available, most of whom “had yet to fire a shot,” but McClellan, exposing “the final dimension of his own loss of courage,” said no. Fearing that Lee was stronger than he actually was, and perhaps thinking that he needed these reserves to save his own

Lt.

The famous bridge, known as Rohrbach’s Bridge before the battle, and Burnside’s Bridge ever since.

Tablet on the battlefield describing the action on the Confederate right.

Chris Mackowski

From the Editor

What are you doing these days to take care of yourself?

The coronavirus pandemic has of course forced all of us to adopt new habits to protect our health, but I’m talking about more than just physical health, although that’s really important. The pandemic is just one of many stress-inducing factors we have swirling around us all right now. I won’t even bother rattling off a list, because we all know what they are and I don’t want to add to anyone’s stress levels by mentioning them.

In the midst of that kind of tumult, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and disconnected. That’s why it’s important to take care of yourself. Keep your stress level down. Get plenty of rest. Extend a word of encouragement to the people around you. Practice random acts of kindness. Read. Go for a walk. Treat yourself to a nice dinner.

Sometimes, the most obvious things are the things we overlook

or forget about. That’s why I am making an effort to remind you.

It’s no secret that the Civil War community, on the whole, skews older, which puts a lot of ECW readers in high-risk categories for COVID-19, in particular. We enjoy your company, so we want to make sure you’re doing OK.

Although the world can seem like a stressful, hostile place sometimes, beyond any individual’s ability to fix, remember that the first place you can start is with yourself. If we all made sure to take care of ourselves, we’d all feel a little better. The cumulative effect of that would make the world a little better.

I hope you’re hanging in there and staying safe and healthy, and taking good care of yourself.

— Chris Mackowski, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief

Emerging Civil War is now officially a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.

We have always run ourselves this way, with a strong focus on our educational mission, so our designation by the IRS really just formalizes the way we’ve done business for the last nine years.

We don’t plan on being a fund-raising organization. That would put us in competition with many great partners who rely on donations to keep them going. We don’t want to hurt them by dipping into the same fund-raising pool they rely on.

That said, with no symposium this year, we’re going to have a tight budget because the symposium is our major source of income. So, we’re hoping our

readers might be willing to help us out with a tax-deductible donation to help us get through these lean times. If you’re interested in making a tax-deductible donation, you can do so through PayPal by clicking this link: https://www.paypal. com/donate/?token=l0pVC2xpSQ868EgMLRNrkqwNlxfW1sUggzfbVRv5C36SciydGxvoadgEVYgFkdq-kFyzYG&country.x=US&locale. x=US

Congratulations to the recipients of this year’s Emerging Civil War Awards!

The Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History: Dave Ruth, former superintendent at Richmond National Battlefield https://wp.me/pbxXKT-Oqc

The Emerging Civil War Book Award: Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January–May 1864 by Hampton Newsome https://wp.me/pbxXKT-OpQ

Runners-Up:

• Conquered by Larry Daniels (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)

• Bodies in Blue by Sarah Handley-Cousins (University of Georgia Press, 2019)

Brig. Gen. Thomas Greely Stevenson Award for Service to ECW: Jack Melton, Civil War News https://wp.me/pbxXKT-Oqw

Brig. Gen. Emory Upton Award, presented to a member of the Emerging Civil War community in recognition of outstanding service to ECW: Rob Orrison https://myemail.constantcontact.com/October2019-Newsletter.html?soid=1125015746998&aid=_ g56S7TbenE

ECW News & Notes

Independent publishers are hurting because of the coronavirus pandemic’s effects.. Ted Savas, publisher of the Emerging Civil War Series, recently shared some thoughts on our blog about the need to support independent publishing. If you missed the article, it’s definitely worth reading: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2020/08/07/ecws-support-independent-publishing/

From Doug Crenshaw: Bert Dunkerly and I are doing a live video for Richmond National Battlefield on Richmond’s lesser-known battlefields on

Saturday, August 22, and in September, we’re doing one on Fort Harrison, with re-enactors.

As usual, Meg Groeling has been hanging out at home writing about a myriad of things Civil War-related. She is also reading about Berdan’s Sharpshooters. “I have this hare-brained theory that the Sharpshooters might be considered a ‘special forces’ unit and, as such, were treated differently from the rest of the rank & file,” she says. “Might this also have applied to the 11th New York in some manner? If Ellsworth had not been killed, might he have created units schooled in the zouave drill that could have been used as special forces to find and flush out the enemy immediately prior to a battle? Could they have attained the status zouave troops had in the Crimea? Inquiring minds want to know!” Meg is also glad baseball is back. Looks like a good, if short, year for the Yankees.

Frank Jastrzembski published an article on Marcellus Crocker in the latest issue of Civil War Times: “Marcellus Crocker: Grant’s Hammer in the Western Theater.” Frank also reports that Brigadier General William Gamble will be receiving a memorial headstone in the next few weeks: https://www.findagrave. com/memorial/212281957/william-gamble. (Frank has worked diligently to get the new headstone installed.)

On September 2, Chris Kolakowski will keynote “A Better World Shall Emerge,” a virtual ceremony commemorating 75 years since the end of World War II. The event is sponsored by Virginia’s WWI and WWII Commission. More details are available here: https://www.virginiawwiandwwii.org/2020signatureevent?fbclid=IwAR -

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Chris Mackowski gave a Zoom presentation on “Grant’s Last Battle,” based on his book of the same name, to the Bull Run Civil War Roundtable. The roundtable recorded the presentation, which can be viewed here: http://bullruncwrt.org/ BRCWRT/AudioArchives/ lecturer-Mackowski20/ ChrisMackowskizoom_0.mp4

Chris also did a video battlefield tour of Chancellorsville based on Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage as part of a virtual fund-raiser sponsored by Central Virginia Battlefields Trust (CVBT). You can see a preview of the tour on the ECW YouTube page: https:// youtu.be/ICrbmAgHAPA. And you can support CVBT’s fund-raiser here: https://bit.ly/ CVBTRedBadgeofCourage.

The September 2020 issue of Civil War News gave a positive review to one of Dave Powell’s latest books, Union Command Failure in the Shenandoah: Major General William Franz Sigel and the War in the Valley of Virginia, May 1864. Reviewer Jonathan Noyalas said, “This study, solidly written, soundly researched, profusely illustrated, and enhanced with detailed maps, is indispensable reading....”

The same issue of Civil War News featured a review by Meg Groeling of Jon Schaff’s Abraham Lincoln’s Statesmanship and the Limits of Liberal Democracy. The Megster called it an “intellectually demanding study....”

The

Because of the pandemic, we had to postpone this year’s ECW symposium to next year, August

2020 ECW Virtual Symposium

Derek Maxfield discusses his new ECWS book, Hellmira.

“For me, part of taking care of myself means a six-mile hike every day,” Mackowski says.

6-8, 2021. We’ll still focus on “Fallen Leaders” as our theme, Gordon Rhea will still be our keynote speaker, and Greg Mertz will still be our battlefield guide.

In the meantime, we recorded a virtual symposium on Saturday, August 8, 2020, one of the days our in-person symposium was originally scheduled. Those talks are now available on the ECW YouTube page:

• Paige Gibbons Backus: A Fight for Life or Death: Carnage in the Medical Field During Civil War

• Sarah Kay Bierle: “We’re the boys who rode around McClellan” The Chambersburg Raid of 1862

• Mark Maloy: The First Shots of the Civil War in Charleston Harbor

• Derek Maxfield: Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp

• Kevin Pawlak: In the Wake of Antietam: The Loudoun Valley Campaign of 1862

• Dan Welch: “Where all so well did their duty”

George Greene’s Brigade at Gettysburg

10 Questions...with Sarah Kay Bierle

Sarah Kay Bierle is the managing editor of Emerging Civil War, which means she’s the daily living heartbeat of our organization. By day, she’s the assistant to the director at the Central Virginia Battlefields Trust in Fredericksburg, Va. We originally profiled her in our December 2017 newsletter (http://conta.cc/2E6B3Mz). You can read her full ECW bio here: https://emergingcivilwar.com/author-biographies/ editors/sarah-kay-bierle/.

What’s it been like, transplanting yourself from California to the heart of Civil War Virginia?

Exciting! The traffic is similar,

summers are hot everywhere, but there are Civil War battlefields in Virginia. It’s more challenging with the pandemic this year, and that has really halted my travel, research, and exploration plans, but it’s also meant that I have the opportunity to really get to know the land, roads, and battlegrounds close to my new home.

I imagine you get to experience history in an entirely different way being here rather than far away. How has that changed your understanding of the Civil War?

I already understood the importance of walking the ground to understand a battle and troop movements but having the opportunity to really take in the topography or return week after week has really helped. I particularly appreciate getting a better sense of direction and distances; some locations are much closer than I had realized, while others are significantly farther apart. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania battlefields are great examples; traveling on foot or by car, I’ve been able to gain a better appreciation for the scope of the battle and the wide areas used for troop movements.

Now that you’ve been on the inside of the battlefield preservation movement for a while, how has that affected your understanding of battlefields?

I think I’m even more aware of the hallowed ground aspect. When I spent hours advocating, writing, or researching land files and historical records, I’d go to the fields more equipped with the knowledge of what happened here. To slightly twist a line from the musical Hamilton: Who lived here? Who died here? How will we tell and preserve their stories? I also get more emotional at battlefields when I’m out walking or working on my own. Deeper meaning overall.

What’s your favorite part of the job working for Central Virginia Battlefields Trust?

Normally, I think I would say “events and visiting with our preservation partners,” but I haven’t really had that experience this year! Since so much of my job is happening with social distancing and remote access, I think writing is my favorite part at this time. I never dreamed I’d get to work in the history field with research and writing for part of my daily job. Getting out and hiking properties or researching new land opportunities is pretty awesome too!

Outside of work, are you in the middle of any projects at the moment?

Aside from sewing lots of masks for the community and working on some admin processes for Emerging Civil War, I’m pressing forward on some research and learning to write biographies! I’d hoped to have a new manuscript for the ECW series finished this autumn, but cancelled research trips and closed libraries have moved that goalpost. It’s a good challenge to see how much I can find and piece together from my desk, though, as I keep working the puzzle of primary sources to find the facts about those who fought or died during the Civil War.

Lightning Round (short answers with a one-sentence explanation)

Favorite primary source?

My Life In The Irish Brigade by Private William McCarter—a new favorite that I discovered this spring!

Favorite Civil Warrelated monument? Sergeant Kirkland Memorial near at Fredericksburg’s Sunken Road. It’s great art and the memorialization of a timeless sentiment of compassion during difficult and horrifying hours.

Favorite unsung hero of the Civil War era? I’ll go with heroines here: Kate Corbin Pendleton or Arabella Barlow.

What’s a bucket-list Civil War site you’ve not yet visited? Missionary Ridge! Dave Powell’s book in the ECW series inspired me to start probing the western theater a little more.

Favorite ECWS book that’s not one of your own? Out Flew The Sabres: The Battle of Brandy Station by Eric Wittenberg and Dan Davis. This is my current favorite (it changes!) because I

used this book and the driving tour to explore Brandy Station for the first time this summer.

check out the “Rev War Revelry” videos, our weekly Sunday night historian happy hour discussion on a number of topics related to the founding era of the United States. A new Facebook Live comes every Sunday at 7 p.m. EST.

August 1780 saw the defeat of another Continental force in South Carolina, when the army under General Horatio Gates was routed at the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. One of the casualties was Baron de Kalb. To learn more about the Battle of Camden and also the death of de Kalb, click on over to Emerging Revolutionary War’s Facebook page for videos from the hallowed ground in South Carolina.

While on our Facebook site,

On the publication front, ERW historian Eric Sterner’s book on the massacre of Gnadenhutten in 1782 is due out in November. Congrats Eric. Updates will follow.

As always, continue to check our blog: www.emergingrevolutionarywar.org.

Civil War Artillery Book

A 392 page, full-color, Civil War Artillery Projectiles – The Half Shell Book.

For more information and how to order visit the website www. ArtillerymanMagazine.com or call 800-777-1862.

$89.95 + $8 media mail for the standard edition. Hardbound.

Sarah Kay Bierle enjoys some time along the banks of the Rappahannock River.

Emerging Civil War Honors Dave Ruth for Service in Civil War Public History

Emerging Civil War is pleased to honor Dave Ruth, former superintendent of Richmond National Battlefield Park, as the recipient of this year’s Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History.

the importance of working partnerships that resulted in wins for everyone involved. In doing so, he helped Richmond better appreciate and preserve its unique and complex Civil War history, to the benefit of us all.”

A native of Pennsylvania, Ruth grew up in a family totally immersed in history, particularly the French and Indian and Civil War eras. “It seemed preordained that I would absorb that interest,” he said, “and many summer trips to the Virginia battlefields with my father at an early age sealed the deal.”

Fort Sumter episode. He has written several book reviews, and in 2014 Ruth and two of his colleagues published No Turning Back: A Guide to the 1864 Overland Campaign, part of the Emerging Civil War Series. He is now in the research phase of a book that will examine the early phase cavalry operations of the Overland Campaign leading to Phil Sheridan’s Richmond Raid and the mortal wounding of Jeb Stuart.

Emerging Civil War Honors Fight for the Old North State with 2020 Book Award

Emerging Civil War has chosen Hampton Newsome’s Fight for the Old North State: The Civil War in North Carolina, January–May 1864 (University Press of Kansas, 2019) as the recipient of this year’s Emerging Civil War Book Award.

campaign. The result is among the best rounded and richest campaign histories I have yet encountered.”

Emerging Civil War’s Award

for Service in Civil War Public History recognizes the work of an individual or organization that has made a significant impact on the field of public history in a way that better helps the general public connect with America’s defining event. “We have a strong public history mission at ECW, and we want to recognize, and offer our gratitude to, the work of others who share that same mission,” explains ECW Editor-inChief Chris Mackowski.

Ruth retired as superintendent of Richmond National Battlefield Park in 2018 after 44 years with the National Park Service. During his tenure at Richmond, the battlefield park grew from 754 acres to just under 4,000.

“Anyone who is familiar with Richmond Battlefield Park knows Dave Ruth,” says ECW Chief Historian Chris Kolakowski. “In his various capacities there and at other parks, Dave has been a superb interpreter and preservationist. Richmond is a better park because of his work and leadership over the years.”

Mackowski added, “Dave’s work at Richmond exemplified

Ruth first started working for the National Park Service in 1973 as a fifer in a Confederate camp at Chancellorsville where he also spent the next few summers honing his historian and interpretive skills. In 1975, he graduated from Virginia Tech with a history degree in honors and had the privilege of working with Dr. James I. Robertson who served as his advisor for several independent studies and his honors thesis that explored the Battle of Salem Church.

Ruth and his wife moved from park to park to gain experience and was finally rewarded with a permanent NPS position in 1977 in Philadelphia. After that assignment, he was sent to Manassas Battlefield and then to Fort Sumter in 1981, where he served as both park historian and chief ranger. In 1991, he relocated to Richmond where he initially served as chief of interpretation, then assistant superintendent, and in 2008 was promoted to park superintendent. He retired from that position in 2018 with 44 years of government service.

History remains at the forefront in Ruth’s post-NPS career. In July 2018, Governor Ralph Northam appointed Ruth to the Virginia Board of Historic Resources for a four-year term. In 2019, he was appointed to the Leadership Board of St. John’s Church, where in 1775 Patrick Henry delivered his famous “Give Me Liberty” speech. He also serves on the boards of the Manassas Battlefield Foundation and the Hanover Tavern Foundation.

During his career he had the opportunity to work on several historical productions including North and South and Glory, and served as the on-camera commentator for Civil War Journal’s

“Throughout Dave Ruth’s career, he focused on interpretive improvements to National Park sites, and fostered relationships with partners,” says ECW’s Robert Dunkerly, who worked for Ruth at Richmond National Battlefield Park. “Perhaps Dave’s best work was done at Richmond, where he oversaw new exhibits, new historic markers on the landscape, encouraged programming with partners, and expanded park properties.”

ECW’s Doug Crenshaw volunteered at Richmond National Battlefield Park when Ruth was superintendent. “Dave was instrumental in working with preservation groups and under his tenure the Park grew from about 750 acres to nearly 4,000. Truly amazing,” Crenshaw says. “He was also really good at public relations in terms of working with other groups in the city. When I think of Dave, I remember the saying ‘You never forget how someone makes you feel.’ Dave always made the volunteers feel special and important. I still remember a volunteers meeting I attended when Dave pulled out my first book and asked me to sign it in front of everyone. That was a big deal to me.”

In 2018, to mark Ruth’s retirement, Mackowski sat down for an extended conversation with him about his work. You can read that interview here: https://emergingcivilwar.com/2018/01/02/a-conversation-with-dave-ruth-richmonds-retiring-superintendent/.

More recently, Mackowski interviewed Ruth for ECW’s 2020 virtual symposium. That interview is available on the ECW YouTube page here: https://youtu.be/_YQxttgyWUs.

Previous recipients of the Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History include Ted Alexander, former historian at Antietam National Battlefield; Dave Roth, publisher of Blue & Gray magazine; D.P. Newton, founder of the White Oak Civil War Museum; and John Coski, historian at the American Civil War Museum.

Emerging Civil War is recognized by the I.R.S. as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation.

Newsome is an independent author who lives in Arlington, Virginia. In addition to The Fight For the Old North State, he is author of Richmond Must Fall: The Richmond-Petersburg Campaign, October 1864 (Kent State Univ. Press, 2013), a study of Grant’s and Lee’s battles in the weeks before the 1864 election. He is also a co-editor of Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and His Fellow Veterans (UVA Press, 2012) along with John Selby and John Horn.

Quint also announced two finalists for the ECW Book Award:

• Conquered by Larry Daniels (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)

• Bodies in Blue by Sarah Handley-Cousins (University of Georgia Press, 2019)

The Emerging Civil War Book Award recognizes a work of Civil War history with a public history focus published in the preceding calendar year. Recipients are chosen by ECW’s stable of published authors, making the award the only peer-to-peer award given by Civil War writers to Civil War writers.

Fight for the Old North State tells the story of the late-war Confederate resurgence in North Carolina. Using rail lines to rapidly consolidate their forces, Southern forces attacked the main Federal position at New Bern in February, raided the northeastern counties in March, hit the Union garrisons at Plymouth and Washington in late April, and concluded with another attempt at New Bern in early May. Newsome also covers the broader context, revealing how these military events related to a contested gubernatorial election; the social transformations in the state brought on by the war; the execution of Union prisoners at Kinston; and the activities of North Carolina Unionists.

“Newsome has proven to be among the best Civil War authors writing today,” said ECW Book Review Editor Ryan Quint. “His book on fighting in North Carolina was not only one of the best campaign studies I read last year, but one of the best I’ve read ever.”

ECW author Sean Chick called The Fight for the Old State “a thorough, organized, and well researched book about a topic not often discussed.” Chick added, “Beyond it being good military history, Newsome takes time to discuss the political, economic, and social factors in the

“The three works nominated this year for the Emerging Civil War Book Award have been among the best we have considered since creating the award,” Quint noted. “All three were extremely well researched and written, and all of them deserve high accolades. There is still so much to learn about the Civil War and the three finalists this year all advanced our understanding of that chaotic conflict.”

Of Bodies in Blue, Quint said, “Sarah Handley-Cousins reminds us that war’s impact and trauma carries far beyond the immediacy of the battlefield, and the book is a great asset in the expanding scholarship that we have on medical care during and after the American Civil War.”

“Larry Daniel’s work brought to us new scholarship and a new understanding on what went wrong for the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, and how, fitting the title, it came to be Conquered,” Quint added.

Emerging Civil War is the collaborative effort of more than two-dozen historians committed to sharing the story of the Civil War in an accessible way. Founded in 2011 by Kris White and Chris Mackowski, Emerging Civil War features public and academic historians of diverse backgrounds and interests, while also providing a platform for emerging voices in the field. Initiatives include the award-winning Emerging Civil War Series of books published by Savas Beatie, LLC; the “Engaging the Civil War” Series published by Southern Illinois University Press; an annual symposium; a speakers bureau; and a daily blog: www.emergingcivilwar.com.

Video Series Commemorates Historic Fairfax County, Virginia, Battle

Bull Run Civil War Roundtable to Produce Videos Commemorating the Battle of Ox Hill

FAIRFAX, Va.—One of the more significant but oft forgotten events in the American Civil War took place Sept. 1, 1862 near Chantilly, Va., in what is remembered locally as the Battle of Ox Hill. There, in the only major military action during the Civil War in Fairfax County, two Union generals were killed in action. This event’s site was almost lost to history as the battlefield was all but sacrificed to economic development. “That ground on which Americans fought to decide whether the union would be preserved could be so easily forgotten was a shock and a wakeup call,” said Blake Myers, Preservation Committee Chair of the Bull Run Civil War Roundtable.

By the actions of a few dedicated historians, a small portion of the battlefield was saved from development and is now a Heritage Resource Park. Union Generals Isaac Stevens and Philip Kearny were killed during this bloody battle. Two monuments commemorate their sacrifices. There have been many commemorative activities here over the years with

speeches, music, and small living history events, but this year, the commemoration will take place over several days in a series of Internet releases.

Education and Awareness Drive the 2020 Commemoration

The Bull Run Civil War Roundtable, a leader in educating the public about the Civil War, and the leading organization for Ox Hill’s recent commemorations, is moving the 2020 activities to an online and pre-recorded series of video productions. There will be seven video productions written, developed, recorded, and released on these topics:

1. Virtual Commemoration Announcement

2. Battle of Ox Hill Overview

3. General Stevens’ Attack & Death

4. General Birney’s Attack & General Kearny’s Death

5. General Reno’s Encounter East of Ox Road & Aftermath of the Battle

6. The Reid-Ballard Story

and The Kearny & Stevens Monuments

7. Ox Hill Battlefield Preservation

“These videos will be educational in nature and focus on the facts of the battle and the consequences of forgetting this battlefield and the historic military action that occurred here,” said Ed Wenzel, a local historian who helped preserve a small part of the battlefield. “History buffs, Civil War living history groups, other roundtable organizations, educational program providers focusing on the history of Fairfax County, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the American Civil War, public libraries, and others will benefit from these productions.”

Video Availability

Videos will be published on Facebook™ and YouTube™, with the Virtual Commemoration Announcement of the series of videos available on the Sept. 1 anniversary.

On Facebook, the videos will

be posted at https://www.facebook.com/bullruncwrt.

On YouTube, the videos can be accessed at: https:// www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bull+run+civil+war+round+table.

Thereafter, the videos can be accessed at http://www.bullruncwrt.org/BRCWRT/Videos/ Videos.html.

Founded in 1991, the Bull Run Civil War Roundtable (BRCWRT) brings together those who wish to expand and share their knowledge of the Civil War. We accomplish this goal in several ways: through lectures, research, field trips, and active participation in the preservation of Civil War sites. By regularly presenting knowledgeable, respected Civil War historians and scholars, writers, and lecturers, it is the intent of the BRCWRT to honor the memory of those who gave “the last full measure”.

The BRCWRT is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization.

By Stephen

The American Civil War was the rst war in which both sides widely used entrenchments, repeating ri es, ironclad warships, and telegraphed communications. It was also the rst American War to be extensively photographed. Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan are famous for having made iconic photographs in the Civil War’s eastern theater. George N. Barnard deserves to be ranked in this top tier for his photographic work in the war’s western theater. A civilian photographer hired by Gen. William T. Sherman’s chief engineer to take pictures of forti cations around Atlanta, Barnard took several hundred of them in and around the city in the fall of 1864. His most famous is the site of Union Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson’s death in the battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864. Thus far, no comprehensive, de nitive listing has been made of the photographer’s work. For this book we have chosen a hundred images we deem “signi cant.”

128 page Paperb ac k: $19.95 (+$3.50 S & H)

Ordering info: $19.95 plus $3.50

“The best little book on Barnard”

Secession – As it was in 1860

by Wayne Wolf

While a discussion of the legality of Southern secession may not be a politically correct topic today, any historians examining the issue of secession must use the standards of 1860 before judging Southern politicians and military leaders. Those norms and viewpoints both influenced and guided the men who led their states into leaving the Union. Any judgment using today’s standards rewrites history and obliterates the reasoning and data available to those voting for secession over fifteen decades ago. While Southern leaders were branded traitors to rouse Northern enthusiasm for preserving the Union, they were only exercising what the founding fathers believed was a constitutional right proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. One right specifically proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence was that, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute new government.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote those words, relying on a compact theory of government wherein when one party breaks the contract it becomes void and unenforceable. This was the logic used to separate our bonds from England and was the same rationale used by the eleven Confederate states. Seen in this light, secession was not a traitorous violation of the Constitution, since secession was never forbidden, or even considered, by the Constitution. Likewise, all states that joined the Union after the original thirteen entered on an equal footing with the existing states. They too enjoyed the right to secede.

In fact, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island conditionally ratified the Constitution, carefully retaining the right of secession. Virginia later used the exact wording of their conditional ratification in its 1861 Ordinance of Secession. South Carolina led the other states out of the Union because they believed a Lincoln presidency no longer served their ends.

Judah P. Benjamin, a Louisiana senator, argued in his farewell address to the Congress on

February 5, 1861, that the right of secession was all that prevented “sovereign states from becoming mere provincial dependencies.” The right to secede was not prohibited to the states, nor was it granted to the Federal government as the 10th Amendment clearly held that any “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The people had a right to establish a government that served their interests best.

As early as February 5, 1833, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts affirmed this position stating, “If the Union was formed by the accession of states then the Union may be dissolved by a secession of states.” Even Abraham Lincoln included in the 1847 Congressional Record the statement that, “Any people whatever have a right to abolish the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.”

The United States Military Academy in 1825, taught its cadets, many who later served as Confederate and Union officers, from William Rawle’s book, A view of the Constitution of the United States, which clearly endorsed secession as a right. Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune summed up the right of secession logic when he asserted that, “The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nonetheless. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other by bayonets.” Finally, an observation by Anthony Trollope, a Britain traveling throughout the South, noted that the South is “seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and different culture.” He recognized the inevitable division of states. The North and South were truly different politically, culturally, and socially. When the South believed their distinctive culture was being overrun by an expansive Federal bureaucracy, they ultimately saw no hope of reconciling. These differences had been compromised several times before (1820, 1850, 1854) to hold the Union together.

The election of Lincoln and a congress of Radical Republicans foreshadowed an end to any compromise. Lincoln made it clear to Southern peace commissioners that he would not compromise on the Republican platform to save the Union. The people of

the South therefore exerted their right to establish a government that served their interests. In essence, the Southern people merely invoked the 10th Amendment. Thus, Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South were not traitors. Their constitutional belief was that the states were sovereign so secession was necessary to provide for the maintenance of states’ rights, and, thud, the Southern states were simply utilizing the authority delegated to them to alter their government. It is ironic today that the United States applauded secession movements around the world, e.g. Ireland seceding from England, Norway seceding from Sweden in 1905, Texas seceding from Mexico, etc., but not within their own country. The United States endorsed these secessions yet oversaw the death of 750,000 Americans while preventing the South from gaining independence.

The narrative that the North has created since 1865 echoes the contention by Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase that “State sovereignty died at Appomattox.” What passes as standard American history is really the North’s history written largely by New Englanders to glorify Yankee heroes and ideals. In war the standard maxim is “to the victor belongs the spoils.” To the Northern victors belonged the right to enforce their viewpoint of defining the ”War for Southern Independence” as a war of disunion, illegal in its inception, and fought over the single issue of slavery. This is the story today’s textbooks tell and woe to the scholar who questions its accuracy. Yet, questioning is what the province of historians should be doing, aiming to uncover fact from fiction, telling the truth with all its blemishes, and informing generations to come what and how they got to where they are.

The perceptions of the Southern political leadership are clearly seen in the Ordinance of Secession framed by South Carolina. It reflects how those leaders viewed the deteriorating relationship between North and South, as well as their stance regarding the legality of secession within the framework of the Constitution and its historical precedents including the Declaration of Independence. Obviously, their views are different from 21st Century interpretations and the current notion of political correctness. Reading the Ordinance is instructive in that it reveals not only the distinct

regional differences perceived by South Carolina’s leadership in December 1860, but how radically different those views are seen today. These differences make the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession a good starting point for understanding the mindset of those folk who voted to leave the Union in 1860.

The following is the exact text of South Carolina’s Ordinance of Secession:

Confederate States of America

– Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.”

They further solemnly declared that whenever any “form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and

to institute a new government.” Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies “are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments—Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article “that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”

Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: “ARTICLE 1—His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”

Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country

a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.

In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.

The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.

If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were—separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May, 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of

the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River [no slavery north of the Ohio River or east of the Mississippi].

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact

laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for threefifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been

drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the

power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860

Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and Past President of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He has authored numerous books and articles on the Civil War emphasizing the life and trials of the common soldier.

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Civil War News book reviews provide our readers with timely analysis of the latest and most significant Civil War research and scholarship. Contact email: BookReviews@CivilWarNews.com.

Only 582 Came Home

The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. By Eric R. Faust. Illustrated, notes, appendices, index, bibliography, 2020, McFarland and Company, mcfarlandbooks.com, 293 pp., softcover. $49.95.

Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf

A Provocative reframing of the American Civil War

The Second American Revolution: The Civil WarEra Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic. By Gregory P. Downs. Notes, Bibliography, and Index, 232 pp., 2019. The University of North Carolina Press. www.uncpress.org. $27.95. Cloth.

Reviewed by David Marshall

drunken and lewd behavior, and reveled in disobeying their officers. Yet, when their time came to “see the elephant,” they fought like the devil at the Battle of Baton Rouge, where they suffered 19 killed and 40 wounded, and the futile attacks at Port Hudson where they sustained another 17 killed and 101 wounded. They also endured malaria, dysentery, and squalid camps that bred disease causing more deaths and disability.

The 6th Michigan Volunteer Infantry enrolled 2,000 volunteers over their four years of hard service. Earlier biographies, e.g. Benjamin C. Johnson’s “Sketches of the 6th Michigan Infantry,” and Edward S, Bacon’s “Among the Cotton Thieves,” proved either too complimentary or overly accusatory. Eric Faust, however, does an excellent job of presenting a balanced, fair, and objective account of both the heroic service and numerous depredations characteristic of the 6th Michigan.

The vast majority of volunteers in the 6th Michigan enlisted to save the Union. Extreme views on the slavery question were rare. Patriotism to the old Union was their calling card. Their first, and most beloved, commander, Col. Frederick Cortenius, did not hesitate to point out that “one could place no reliance on soldiers once they were removed” from the moral restraints of home and family. Thus, as they endured months of monotonous drilling in the swamps of Louisiana, they frequently pillaged, engaged in

In addition to their two major battles, the 6th Michigan fought numerous guerrilla encounters and enjoyed success in the Ponchatoula Raid. By the time they mustered out in August 1865, 528 of their members had died and 327 were discharged for disability. Physical and psychological wounds lasted for decades after the war. Nostalgically, at reunions lasting until 1922, they celebrated their loyalty and courage glossing over more sordid depredations of pillaging, profiteering, and near mutiny.

This book is well written, historically accurate, and treats the good and bad in a balanced fashion. The addition, as an appendix, of a complete roster is an invaluable reference for any scholar wishing to further examine the contributions of this unit. Thus, it is easy to highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Michigan units during the Civil War.

Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and Past President of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He has authored numerous books and articles highlighting the common soldier in the Civil War.

The Civil War was more than a fight between two regions of the United States; it was greater than a domestic struggle, or a fight to preserve the nation. The differences were not only national but international as well. It spilled into many other nations and confronted how the world was going to change. Would countries be free-labor republics and governed by a constitution without slavery or would empires continue to dominate many countries and regions.

In the end, Americans called the four-year nineteenth century conflict such names as the Rebellion or the War of Secession. During the early 20th century, people phrased the term Civil War as an effort to depoliticize the struggle between the states and reconcile better relations with white Southerners.

Some people even used the phrase second American Revolution for this momentous period in U.S. history. The New York Herald used this phrase on March 4, 1869, to describe the change happening with the upcoming Ulysses S. Grant presidential inauguration. The paper emphasized that the Union general would help bring about a transformational change. Significant modifications were the end of slavery, citizenship for freed people, forcing the Southern states to accept voting rights

for African American men and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments with the threat of martial law. In the end, Gregory Downs makes the excellent point that these reforms came about due to a violent reconstructing of a reunified nation’s political structure. Downs explains that people in the post-bellum time period wanted to see how the United States would influence old traditional powers such as Great Britain, France, Spain, and others as an emerging world power. This wonderful monograph starts off by detailing, not only changes that occurred because of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil War/Reconstruction amendments, but how citizens reevaluated our founders, their legacy, the First American Revolution, and the establishment of a new government under a ratified constitution. The chapter titled The Civil War the World Made goes into great detail concerning how the U.S. helped bring about an end to global slavery as well as bringing about the establishment of constitutional republics and increased freedom and rights for colonial controlled countries such as Cuba. Chapter three assesses what the Civil War and Reconstruction accomplished and what disappointments happened to race relations and civil rights due to the Jim Crow era. The author further notes that, due to turmoil that occurred in the United States, Mexico, Cuba, and Spain, the resulting changes failed to go far enough in Western Hemisphere countries undergoing their own revolutions and independence in the years following the Civil War and the Second American Revolution. Finally, the chapter titled “Afterward” posits that the Second American Revolution is unfinished today and did not go far enough in the nineteenth century. This excellent historian demonstrates that many changes were significant such as

the freeing of four million individuals held in bondage, the greatest emancipation in world history, and the largest confiscation of property in any one nation’s history. Downs shows that the Civil War reshaped the United States, politically, socially, and economically. In the end bigger changes could have happened faster concerning the civil rights for African Americans, assistance for, and alliances with Atlantic world emerging revolutionary nations and their independence from old world countries such as Spain.

Using numerous primary and secondary sources, Downs bypassed many opinions of previous authors and presented an important new and insightful interpretation of a great deal that has not been studied in the past.

He makes a substantial contribution to understanding what comprehensive deviations arose in the U.S. and in the world by providing fresh insight that helps us understand the motivation, strategies, tensions, controversies, and triumphs that have characterized the work and lives of people and nations discussed in this excellent book. While this volume contains six important illustrations, it would have been helpful to all readers to have included many more images and a few maps. Highly recommended by this reviewer.

David Marshall is a high school American history teacher in the Miami-Dade School district for the past thirty-three years. A lifelong Civil War enthusiast, David is president of the Miami Civil War Round Table Book Club. In addition to numerous reviews in Civil War News and other publications, he has given presentations to Civil War Round Tables on Joshua Chamberlain, Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Common Soldier.

Davis, Douglas feud divided antebellum Democrats—and eventually the Union

Arguing Until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy. By Michael E. Woods. Photos, notes, index, 338 pp., 2020. University of North Carolina Press, www. uncpress.org, hardcover. $34.95.

Reviewed by Brian Matthew Jordan

nature of democracy. Historians have marveled at the rather unlikely coalition of Whigs, Free Soilers, abolitionists, Nebraska Democrats, and nativists that forged the Republican Party, — they have paid considerably less attention to the sectionalism that plagued the Democrats. “The party could stand for white men’s democracy or white masters’ property,” Woods writes, “but not both” (178).

Indeed, the book supplies an archaeology of the deep, structural schism that resulted in the 1860 collapse of the Democratic Party. Hardly the consequence of “short-term” events, the road to the fated Charleston convention looped through decades of mutual suspicion and mounting distrust (45). “No political coalition,” the author concludes, “is ever monolithic” (227).

a proslavery perversion of democracy” (91). In reality, white southern slaveholders regarded the doctrine with no small distrust. To slaveholders, popular sovereignty seemed only to open the path to more free states. Just as it failed to resolve debates over slavery’s expansion into the western territories, then, Douglas’s cherished doctrine proved no analgesic for Democratic Party unity. Unwilling to make any concession to the ballot box or white majority opinion, southern slaveholders betrayed their anti-democratic proclivities.

Surrendering After Robert E. Lee

Obstinate Heroism-–The Confederate Surrenders After Appomattox. By Steven J. Ramold. Maps, illustrations, photos, notes, index, bibliography. 490 pp. 2020. University of North Texas Press, untpress.unt. edu. $34.95.

Reviewed

by Tom

Elmore

firestorm Sherman created in his over generous terms to Johnston (which is very well examined) would overshadow all future surrenders. Unfortunately, there is little new information presented. Even worse, there are misspellings of names and some historical errors. Furthermore the author spends too much time discussing the military campaigns that led to the surrender.

Arguing Until Doomsday opens with Stephen A. Douglas striking a familiar pose: engaging in a vigorous debate. This introductory vignette, however, is not drawn from the celebrated campaign of 1858, during which the portly Illinois senator met his Republican rival Abraham Lincoln in seven, outdoor debates across the Prairie State. Instead, author Michael E. Woods, an associate professor of history at Marshall University and the author of two previous books on the sectional crisis, recovers the scene from the floor of the U.S. Senate. There, in 1859, the “Little Giant” attempted to land the latest blow in a long simmering quarrel with his fellow Democrat Jefferson Davis, the lanky senator from Mississippi.

That quarrel is the subject of this impressive new book, which deftly recovers the dynamism and disagreements that animated, and ultimately destroyed, the Democratic Party on the eve of the Civil War. The political crisis of the 1850s is often portrayed as a struggle between a newly ascendant Republican Party and a Democratic Party that, beholden to racism, consistently truckled to the Slave Power. This overly simplistic and ultimately misleading view has effaced contentious debates within the Democratic Party over the fate of slavery in the western territories, the definition of property rights, and the

Braided throughout the book, the personal and political biographies of Woods’ two protagonists bring his larger arguments into sharp relief. Woods begins by reminding his readers that Douglas and Davis were “western men” who embraced “zealous expansionism, shrill racism, and strident nationalism” (41). Despite these striking similarities, their differences mattered much more in the end. Championing a capacious vision for a “Greater Northwest,” Douglas advocated federal land grants, internal improvements, a homestead bill, and, above all, political sovereignty for the citizens of the new western territories. Though he harbored no special sympathy for Free Soilers, Douglas sought to empower his western constituents to make their own decisions about slavery on the ground, without and beyond federal intervention.

To the contrary, Jefferson Davis refused to leave slavery’s future in the west to chance. Embracing the “common property doctrine,” he insisted on “special federal protection” for the peculiar institution (103). During the 1850s, southern Democrats tapped out a steady drumbeat of impatient demands, including a federal slave code and calls to reopen the transatlantic slave trade.

In October 1854, Abraham Lincoln famously denounced popular sovereignty as “covert real zeal for the spread of slavery.” Woods is no Douglas apologist, but he demonstrates that our narratives have perhaps too often parroted Lincoln, staking out “popular sovereignty as

Ironically, these proclivities would contribute to the failure of the Confederate project. Tonedeaf policies, imperious confiscation measures, and burdensome taxes-in-kind eroded popular support for the slaveholder’s republic during the war. Not unlike the Union that Douglas sought to save in the last months of his life, the Confederacy collapsed.

A short review can only tally some of Woods’s important arguments. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act,” the author concludes, “was largely a victory for slaveholders, but it sowed suspicion among antislavery and proslavery critics alike” (132). Democrats shared racist beliefs, but those views led adherents in radically different directions. Given their ideas about property rights and majoritarian rule, many white southerners believed that Douglas posed no less a threat than Lincoln in 1860. While the South was hardly a homogenous political entity, Douglas galvanized much opposition among white slaveholders. Diligently researched, closely argued, and clearly written, Arguing Until Doomsday is an essential book for students of antebellum politics and the road to Civil War. Woods makes clear that when antebellum Americans debated slavery’s fate in western territories, they also debated the meaning of democracy, self-government, and the very nation they would soon tear apart.

Brian Matthew Jordan is associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University and the author of Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History.

One of the biggest misconceptions of American history is that all the fighting in the Civil War ended when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox, Va., April 9, 1865. As Steven J. Ramold, a professor of American History at Eastern Michigan University, points out, this was not the case.

While Lee had to surrender because he was surrounded and had no rations, there were still three major Confederate armies and numerous smaller forces, that could have continued the war if their commanders had wanted. However, within weeks all major Confederate land forces had surrendered. Appomattox and the collapse of the Confederate government led to realizing the hopelessness of continuing the war. Furthermore, all Confederate forces saw an epidemic rise in desertions. While Lee’s surrender was neat and tidy, and set the terms for all following surrenders, the others were at times difficult, proving, as the author notes, it is easier to start a war than to end one. It was not until more than a year after Lee’s capitulation, that President Andrew Johnson formally declared an end to all hostilities on August 20, 1866.

The book is broken down into detailed examinations of individual surrenders starting with Joseph Johnston’s surrender to William T. Sherman in North Carolina. The decision to discuss it first was wise since the political

Next is Richard Taylor’s surrender to Edward Canby in Alabama. Again, the author spends too much time discussing the military campaigning before the surrender. Some may also take issue with him lumping Nathan Bedford Forrest’s surrender together with Taylor’s. However, the examinations of the actual surrenders are excellent.

The discussion about Confederate forces surrendering to James Wilson is the one episode where a detailed looked at military operations is appropriate. Wilson’s raid through Alabama and Georgia led to numerous small Confederate forces giving up and brought peace to the region where the raid took place. Ramold makes a convincing argument that Wilson’s Raid deserves more attention than it has received.

The last examination is perhaps the best, the discussion of Edmond Kirby Smith and the end of the Trans-Mississippi Department. The book does an excellent job of setting up the situation and explaining issues Smith faced in what was one of the toughest and most thankless postings on either side of the war. Smith did not formally surrender his army, a la Lee, because in the end he had nothing to surrender thanks to desertions and junior officers surrendering their commands. In fact, Smith escaped to Cuba rather than surrender himself.

Overall this is a book where the parts are better than the whole. Some tighter editing and more time spent on the complexities of the surrenders would have made this a much better book. Nonetheless, this is a good book that shows the end of the war did not take place only in a Virginia parlor, but was a drawn out, and complicated process.

Tom Elmore examined Johnston’s surrender to Sherman in his 2012 book A Carnival of DestructionSherman’s Invasion of South Carolina.

New Study Highlights the Contradictions of Civil War-Era Free Labor

Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil America. By Brian P. Luskey. Images, notes,

bibliography, index, 279 pp., hardback, 2020. University of North Carolina Press, uncpress.org. $34.95.

Reviewed by Tim Talbott

free labor system was not without its fair share of flaws.

Organized into six chapters, Men is Cheap includes a helpful contextual introduction and fitting conclusion. In this study we see that the Civil War provided a good testing ground for the free labor system. As the war progressed, political decisions and military actions produced events that offered certain individuals and organizations, who were perhaps more interested in personal gain than national advancement, numerous opportunities to cash in. Corruption involving Union war materiel manufacturing contracts has long been part of Civil War scholarship, but until recently, labor fraud in relation to the Union cause has largely remained out of the spotlight.

“Free Soil, Free Labor, and Fremont” was an early rally cry for the emerging Republican Party in the mid-1850s. To many of its Northern proponents, the idea of free labor provided not only a better economic model, but also staked claim to moral high ground over the labor system practiced in the 15 slave states. As most Northerners perceived it, allowing laborers the ability to choose their profession and their employer, and to earn their living by the sweat of their brow or by their ingenuity and intellect, without competition from slave labor was clearly superior. Northerners also felt that slave labor hindered innovation and discouraged industrial trades. However, as Brian P. Luskey informs us in Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America, the

Focusing heavily on what were then called “intelligence offices,” that operated somewhat like a shadier version of today’s employment agencies, Luskey exposes a clear contradiction between the ideals of free labor, and how under the pressures of wartime necessity it sometimes became manipulated into the corrupt exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized populations who had few options. While viewed by many Northerners at the time as less than model citizens, intelligence office brokers also ironically filled the manpower needs, on the battlefront as well as on the home front, that ultimately helped facilitate Union victory. They provided quite the intriguing paradox.

Not surprisingly intelligence office brokers seemed to target the most vulnerable. They sought out the unemployed and immigrants in the North to fill substitute roles for men who could afford to buy their way out of military service. These middlemen also located recently freed

African American men, once they were finally allowed to officially enlist, to fill state quotas required by the Federal government. Agents combed refugee camps to find freedwomen and children, as well as white Unionist refugees, to work in Northern homes and on Northern farms at low wages. Even the Confederate soldier was not out of bounds to these brokers. Confederate prisoners and deserters who pledged the oath of allegiance to the United States even could obtain employment with the Federal government through intelligence office agents. For a price, agents moved workers where the work was needed, often, of course, with little regard for the working conditions or ultimate fate of the worker. In doing so, these middlemen commodified the worker, not so differently than how the slave trader had done the enslaved.

Men is Cheap did not provide much discussion about reform efforts, nor the use of fraudulent free labor as a political tool. Perhaps there were few attempts at reform due to the constant focus on prosecuting the war, but I would be surprised, if at minimum, the Democratic Party or “Copperhead” factions did not at least mention instances of this abuse in an effort to gain political ground.

Regardless, Men is Cheap makes a significant contribution to the body of Civil War scholarship, particularly that relating to the growing genre of labor history. How the United States came to regard labor developed in part from the Civil War years, and its relevance is still clearly present in today’s society.

Tim Talbott is the Director of Education, Interpretation, Visitor Services, and Collections at Pamplin Historical Park and the National Museum of the Civil War Soldier in Petersburg, Va. He is currently researching soldiers captured during the Petersburg Campaign.

Yankee Marylanders Revealed

The Maryland Brigade. By Daniel Carroll Toomey. Images, notes, bibliography, index, 160 pp., soft cover, 2018. Toomey Press, Baltimore, MD.

Reviewed by Larry Babits

Gettysburg when the Brigade was assigned to the I Corps as the Third Brigade, Third Division, to make up some of the losses occurred in July. They saw action as the Army of Northern Virginia waited for the Potomac River to fall enough so they could cross. Later that fall, the Brigade participated in the northern Virginia campaigning.

After winter camp the Brigade was transferred to the V Corps as its Third Brigade of the Second Division for the Overland Campaign. They fought along the Orange Plank Road in the Wilderness, then at Spotsylvania’s Laurel Hill and Harris Farm. They finished the war in front of Petersburg and then marched to Appomattox.

As stated in the introduction, much of Maryland’s Civil War history has been written by those of the Southern persuasion. Toomey has, with several earlier books, and now The Maryland Brigade, begun redeeming those Marylanders who fought for the Union.

Appropriately, the Brigade began with the First Maryland Regiment (US) that had the tough luck of fighting fellow, but veteran, Marylanders at Front Royal. The Federals performed well, but were doomed by a lack of support and overwhelming numbers in a running fight northward to Winchester. It would be awhile before they were back in action, but they are, for many “The Union Marylanders.”

Toomey has thrown down a gauntlet of sorts. No study of a Federal Maryland regiment approaches Robert Driver’s First and Second Maryland Infantry, CSA. The Maryland Brigade is a short, concise work beginning to raise awareness of the sources available to present comparable studies. It was probably not an easy task as the Brigade was assigned to guard the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad for a goodly portion of their existence. That service brought some regiments into combat but they missed much of the “big show” involving Army of the Potomac campaigning until 1864. Their service changed after

The Brigade was initially composed of the 1st, 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Maryland Infantry Regiments and Alexander’s Light Artillery. The companies were recruited across the state; a heavy leavening of Baltimoreans was matched by men from northern and western counties. Few came from the southern counties.

The book is well illustrated, particularly the two maps showing where they served late in the war. There are many images of the Brigade’s members and some show their gear as well. The bibliography is sparse, but for the introduction to a brigade, it provides numerous starting points for additional, much needed follow up research.

Toomey’s Maryland Brigade will serve for some time as the unit’s reference work and, more importantly, the basis for studies on the unit’s regiments and their service. It is recommended for schools and for anyone wanting to add to their knowledge about the Overland Campaign, guarding Union logistical lines, and Maryland’s Union soldiers.

Larry Babits is, among other things, a rear rank private in the First Maryland Infantry and formerly Director of the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He worked on Civil War wreck sites including the USS Otsego, Maple Leaf, Star, and CSS ram Neuse. His main areas of interest are the private American soldier and musketry.

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Detailed Book on the Cumberland Valley Railroad Black Military’s Quest For Racial Equality

Targeted Tracks: The Cumberland Valley Railroad in the Civil War, 1861–1865. By Scott L. Mingus Sr., and Cooper H. Wingert. Maps, photos, appendices, index, 256 pp., 2019. Hardback. Savas Beatie, www. savasbeatie.com. $32.95.

Reviewed by Jason M. Frawley

the role the CVRR played during the American Civil War.

Scott L. Mingus Sr., “a scientist and consultant in the global pulp and paper industry,” has published numerous books and articles on south-central Pennsylvania during the American Civil War, including Flames Beyond Gettysburg: The Confederate Expedition to the Susquehanna River, June 1863. Mingus’s solidly researched contributions to Civil War historiography help frame often overlooked aspects of the Civil War and the Gettysburg Campaign. In Targeted Tracks: The Cumberland Valley Railroad in the Civil War, 1861–1865, he partners with Cooper H. Wingert, author of The Confederate Approach on Harrisburg: The Gettysburg Campaign’s Northernmost Reaches, to tell the story of the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CVRR) during America’s deadliest conflict. The authors begin by exploring the origins of the CVRR during the first half of the nineteenth century, when the economic growth of the Cumberland Valley “gave rise to the need to move even larger quantities of freight and passengers quickly” (4). While it initially ran from Harrisburg to Chambersburg, Penn., the CVRR ultimately acquired a neighboring railroad and came to run the seventy-four miles through the Cumberland Valley down to Hagerstown, Md. With the railroad established in the opening chapter, the authors employ a narrative model for the remainder of the book, focusing on the leadership of CVRR President Franklin Watts (1841–1873) and

In the remaining chapters, the authors engage in a microcosmic study that demonstrates the importance of the CVRR as “a small part of the vast railroad system that the Federal government could use to move supplies, food, medicine, and soldiers into position to implement Lincoln’s decision to preserve the Union by force” (41). Steeped in primary-source research, it is a well-told, fast-paced tale that illustrates the CVRR’s, sometimes “incidental,” role in many landmark events, including John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid, the First Manassas Campaign, the Antietam Campaign, the raid on Chambersburg, the Gettysburg Campaign, the burning of Chambersburg, and the Lincoln Assassination and Funeral Procession (33). The authors also explain that the railroad served an important post-war function, taking thousands of soldiers home and offering transportation to numerous veteran reunions, including the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg.

There is an old saying in the military and among military historians that “amateurs talk about tactics while professionals study logistics;” Targeted Tracks certainly illustrates the logistical importance of the CVRR during the Civil War. At times, the CVRR served as the means for getting Union soldiers and supplies into both offensive and defensive positions. At other times, it served as a vital line of escape and evacuation for civilians alarmed by Confederate invasions into Maryland and Pennsylvania. At other times, it served as an avenue for Confederate smugglers and spies. As the authors illustrate, the “onset of the Civil War offered a unique opportunity to prove both the strategic and tactical value of rail transportation on a scale never before seen,” the CVRR is but one example (42). While a more compelling thesis and a more robust conclusion that offered further context and exploration of the legacy and importance of the CVRR could have strengthened the work, Mingus and Wingert have provided a well-researched, engagingly written story about “one of the Civil War’s most bitterly contested Northern railroads.” (238).

Duty Beyond The Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight For Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870–1920. By Le’Trice D. Donaldson. Illustrated, Notes, Bibliography, Southern Illinois University Press, 2020, 200 pp., softcover.

Reviewed by Wayne L. Wolf

become symbols of racial pride and community leadership.

Despite racial barriers evident in the U.S. military during the Jim Crow era, black soldiers withstood discrimination as an end to the greater goals of full citizenship, social equality, educational advancement, and as icons of “racial warriors.”

This book provides a contextualized paradigm to trace how black soldiers created a new identity to define manhood and how their military service could become part of a larger civil rights movement. Proving manhood, demonstrating citizenship, and preserving racial pride were some motivating factors behind African American enlistments from the Civil War forward. Thus, beginning with the Mexican War, the frontier service of Buffalo Soldiers, the Spanish American War, the Cuban invasion, and the Philippine insurgency, black soldiers enlisted to show their devotion to American ideals and to

The author then extends her thesis to the post WWI era where she contends the “new Negro” emerged with an aim to enact systemic change in America through racial militancy. To illustrate this perspective she highlights the military service of two black military pioneers, Henry O. Flipper and Charles Young. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point, had a stellar career in his early years of service during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Despite being later dismissed from the service, he was not supported by the black community to clear his name because of his belief in the self-made man philosophy through education and achievement promoted by the Booker T. Washington school of thought. In contrast Charles Young, an adherent to the W.E.B. DuBois school of thought, carried the mantel of his race and country as a more militant “race man” in the early twentieth century. This earned him the support of the black press and the African American community at large. Particularly after WWI this more militant approach to the acquisition of civil rights became the accepted path by the black press, military members, and civil rights leaders.

This book is historically accurate, well written, and illustrative of the struggle for racial equality.

The only limiting factor is the failure to admit to the many depredations of black soldiers during this period, including their challenges to superior officers, the Houston Riots, the David Fagen affair, etc. Likewise, the author’s support of the DuBois school of militancy is evident, giving little credence to the later Tuskegee model. Despite these limitations, the book is recommended for those interested in African American military history, the role of black soldiers in the quest for social equality, or the meaning of military service in the definition of manhood.

Wayne L. Wolf is Professor Emeritus at South Suburban College and past president of the Lincoln-Davis Civil War Roundtable. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the Civil War specializing in the role of the common soldier.

Jason M. Frawley, Ph.D., is a history professor at Tarrant County College, Northwest Campus, in Fort Worth, Texas.

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